If you are an Orange County taxpayer, get ready to reach deeply into your pockets and your savings account to pay for the extra dollars that eventually will be necessary so that the county's "public servants" can retire at a far earlier age and with guaranteed retirement benefits that match or even exceed their final pay at retirement.

Not only is the proposed retirement deal a likely assault on county taxpayers, but it is a dramatic wealth transfer from younger and newer county workers to those at the tail end of their careers. Conservative estimates suggest that 5 percent of the county's workforce, about 800 people, will immediately retire upon approval of this contract. They will increase their retirement by more than 50 percent, yet will not have to pay much more toward it.

Meanwhile, the newer workers will have to pay more and forego raises to pay for this spike.

Because the contract is retroactive to cover all existing employees, it will add nearly $300 million in liabilities to a system that already is about $1 billion short of meeting forecasted retirement demands.

The actuarial tables of the county workforce have gotten Orange County Treasurer John M.W. Moorlach extremely concerned. He points to the $300 million immediate liability increase, which he notes is more than one-sixth of the total amount of debt incurred during the O.C. bankruptcy.

Moorlach - who successfully predicted the 1994 bankruptcy and sees ominous parallels here - doesn't believe the financial assumptions will hold for 30 years. The unions pitching this deal have sworn to the county Board of Supervisors that this dramatic pension spike won't cost the county anything.

That might be true if the overly optimistic 7.5-percent annual projected rate of return will hold over 30 years. That's quite an assumption. Moorlach compares it to banking that the Angels will be in the playoffs every year for the next 30 years.

Furthermore, union members say they will forego raises for three years and up their retirement payments to help pay for the additional retirement costs, but those promises only last for the three years of the contract, and the liabilities go on for 30 years.

What happens after the union changes its demands after three years?

Across the state, government unions have been amazingly successful at convincing politicians to continually up their retirement benefits. Public unions swore that statewide pension spikes approved by the Legislature in 1999 wouldn't cost anything, either, and now one California city after another is facing potential bankruptcy, higher taxes or new bond payments to make good on those "free" promises.

The Register has called that cascading problem the "pension tsunami," as the tidal wave of new benefits will start overcoming government budgets, one after another.

"It's a political problem," said Moorlach. "We have electeds who seem to believe the line that it doesn't cost anything. But now we have cities up north that are sucking air. They've increased benefits so much, and now they can't afford to pay them. They are looking at layoffs, tax increases, and all the stuff we had to do after the bankruptcy."

When a government agency agrees to a pension increase, that increase is a binding contract, and it has implications for 30 years. In the last few years, various California agencies have been agreeing to generous deals that are obligating future taxpayers to enormous liabilities.

The big spike came in 1999, when the Legislature agreed to allow local governments to grant "3 percent at 50" retirement benefits for firefighters and law-enforcement agencies. One agency after another agreed to these benefit terms. That increased pensions by 50 percent instantly for all agencies that approved them.

That means that the employee receives 3 percent of pay times the number of years worked after 30 years for a total retirement of 90 percent of final pay. Other benefits are thrown in to spike the final salary, and Orange County allows its public safety employees to work 33 1/3 years, which means that cops and firefighters in Orange County retire with 100 percent or more of their final salary.

The pay levels aren't bad, either. A number of Orange County police officers earn in the six figures, and we've got an Orange County firefighter earning $227,000 a year. Firefighters are paid for hours spent sleeping while they are on call, and the average firefighter earns $92,000 to $122,000 a year, including overtime.

Yet, it's never enough. OC firefighters have submitted signatures for a 2006 initiative that will allow them to take more tax revenue from other law enforcement agencies so they can hire more firefighters.

In Sacramento, unions have succeeded in expanding categories to make non-law-enforcement jobs - i.e., food inspectors at prisons - considered law enforcement, so these employees can retire with 90 percent to 100 percent of their pay also.

In Orange County and elsewhere, all the other government employees want their seats on the gravy train. The OC proposal would take all non-law-enforcement employees from a respectable 1.67 percent at 57 to 2.7 at 55.

For the plan to work, the stock market must perform at levels Moorlach describes as "irrational exuberance." Remember when Gov. Gray Davis went on a spending spree, promising that the new programs wouldn't harm taxpayers - provided the economy kept providing record levels of revenue, year after year? We know how that panned out. Would you incur debt based on the prediction that your house will continue to appreciate for the next 30 years at the same rate it has appreciated over the past five years?

I didn't think so.

"It's always an up escalator, there is no down escalator," said Moorlach. "After three years, employees will come and complain that they haven't had a raise for three years."

That's what unions do. But Moorlach believes that the unions evenutally will collapse on their own success, but not until taxpayers are up to their ears in debt and higher taxes to pay for decades-long commitments made by city councils and supervisors too gutless to do the right thing and just say no.

Most private sector employees receive defined contributions. The employer guarantees to contribute a defined amount, and the employee's retirement depends upon the amount of contribution and how well the contributed investments perform over the years. In the public sector, employees are given a defined benefit. They are promised a rate of return, and if union projections are too rosy, taxpayers generally get to pay the difference. Unions always have the incentive to pitch the rosiest scenario.

Eventually, the fix is for government bureaucrats to rely on the same type of pensions the rest of us receive. Otherwise, the disparity between the government masters and their servants in the private sector will become intolerably stark.

"Taxpayers in the private sector are deferring retirement - sometimes into their 70s - to support themselves and to pay the taxes that enable government employees to retire at age 50 or 55 with inflation-adjusted pensions that approach 100 percent of salary in the highest-paid year of service," wrote Reed Royalty, president of the Orange County Taxpayers Association, in a letter to the Board of Supervisors.

What's the chance a majority of supes will stand up for the Average Joe in the face of union pressure?