Concern about California’s overspending on public pensions is no longer limited to policy wonks: Today, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll, fully 85 percent of likely voters say those state and local government expenditures are a problem. Seventy-three percent favor offering new government employees 401(k) plans similar to what most private sector employees get.

The state’s voters are prescient: Unless they stop California’s statewide spending spree, they’ll soon face a full-blown public pension debacle.

As The New York Times recently reported, the plight of cities like Desert Hot Springs — a small town nearing bankruptcy largely due to unsustainable pension costs — is casting a national spotlight on the disastrous growth of California’s pension liabilities.

For years, the state’s coastal cities and inland municipalities have promised — and delivered — larger and larger retirement benefits to public sector workers. Now, California state and local governments face an estimated $655 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities.

A new database available at www.transparentcalifornia.com contains salary and pension data for most of California’s government employees. It paints a startling picture of state profligacy. In 2012, over 99,000 California county employees received six-figure salary compensation packages, representing over 50 percent of the estimated full-time workforce, while over 12,000 county workers made in excess of $200,000.

The problem is acute in the Bay Area, where public employee compensation has reached unsustainable highs. Pensions in Alameda County provide 538 retirees with payouts of over $100,000 a year — 25 of which enjoy packages exceeding $200,000 in annual income. Alameda’s retired public defender clears over twice that sum — $527,255 a year. One retired Palo Alto official clears $281,108; a Mountain View retiree, $262,365. From Sunnyvale to Berkeley to San Leandro and beyond, the list goes on and on.

The fiscal irresponsibility doesn’t stop with pensions. The highest-paid public employees enjoy salaries that most taxpayers could only dream of. Hayward’s Deputy Fire Chief pulled down $328,000 in total compensation. A Milpitas fire chief took home $494,000. And in Santa Clara, the acting police chief made out like a bandit with a grand yearly total of $639,000.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has filed a statewide ballot initiative that could address the problem at its source. California is desperate for action that would provide state and local governments with the tools they need to fix California’s public employee retirement plans. Without such changes, policymakers are likely to follow the dangerous lead of California cities like Vallejo and Stockton–which have been forced to impose heavy write-downs on municipal bondholders.

Reed is only one of the Democrats in the bipartisan coalition of mayors supporting and promoting efforts to solve the problem. Though labor unions are working overtime to pressure state Democrats to kill any initiative that calls for sincere change, the pensions and benefits crisis isn’t a partisan issue — as current polls make clear. Everyone, especially young Californians, should be terrified at the prospect of this kind of spending continuing unabated.

Other states across the country such as Connecticut, Illinois, and Kentucky are confronting a similar crisis. California needs to set an example for the rest of America by confronting its unsustainable spending head-on. But to do this, California agencies need the legal authority to negotiate changes to pensions and benefits going forward. Playing politics is no longer an option.

Without significant pension reform, the world’s 12th largest economy is in for a rude awakening.

Mark Bucher is president of the California Public Policy Center. He wrote this for this newspaper.