The largest U.S. public employee pension fund filed an appeal yesterday of a judge's August ruling that the city of San Bernardino, California, is eligible for bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported yesterday. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which manages $277 billion of assets, has fiercely opposed San Bernardino's quest for chapter 9 protection, because the city suspended its $1.2 million bimonthly payments to the fund for a year after it declared bankruptcy in August 2012. That move was unprecedented. No California city has ever stopped paying CalPERS, and the fund — which administers benefits for over 3,000 city, state and local employers — is worried that such behavior could encourage other cash-strapped cities to follow suit, said Karol Denniston, a bankruptcy attorney in San Francisco.
