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From 2013 to 2017, UAL payment costs were not broken out by CalPERS. UAL costs were included in the Normal Rate value. Therefore, we inferred normal and UAL costs from 2013 to 2017 by calculating normal costs using the lowest normal rate reported after 2017, and then subtracting these costs from the total reported pension costs. The remainder is the UAL cost. 
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From 2013 to 2015, only miscellaneous employee pension plan costs were provided by CalPERS, no safety plan data was provided. For some analyses in this article, we inferred CalPERS pension costs for these years using the total pension costs reported in the GCC data, and assuming the split between normal and UAL costs was identical to the split in 2016.
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Pension amounts reported to GCC by cities do not exactly match the contribution amounts issued by CalPERS, but they are generally close. Possible explanations for this discrepancy: 
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CalPERS reports FY July to June, while cities may report calendar year data to the state controller. The reporting period is not explicitly stated on the GCC website.
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Cities may pay more into the plan. Presumably they can also pay less, but it is not clear if penalties are incurred for doing so.
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Cities may report other pension costs in the GCC data besides CalPERS required contributions
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Cities may spread the payments across various employees and departments in differing ways. E.g., Oakland probably applies the UAL proportionally to individual total compensation (including OT) which distorts the UAL cost load onto public safety, even though the CalPERS costs are proportionately more for miscellaneous employees.
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Some cities include UAL payments in their GCC reporting, some do not. Reporting may also vary across years for a single city. In theory cities flag whether they do or do not include them. However this flag data is often incorrect, as can be seen from the analysis in slide ?? of the supplementary data.
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Yellow cells and tabs in the supporting data indicate incomparable data due to some cities including UAL payments in compensation, and some not.
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