EDITORIAL PREDICTABLE DISASTER.

IN Washington, President George W. Bush suffers repeated embarrassment over revelations that the dangers of Hurricane Katrina were predicted, but ignored. California leaders should take a lesson from his experience.

Here, another predictable disaster is on the horizon, although this one is man-made. It's pensions for public employees, which politicians have recklessly sweetened for years, knowing that the bill wouldn't come for decades.

The state's unfunded liabilities for health and retirement costs are pegged at somewhere between $150 billion and $190 billion. And according to former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and other experts, those figures might be based on unrealistically rosy assumptions of future economic growth.

A financial disaster is closing in, one that could bankrupt local governments, or at least cost taxpayers dearly. No one in Sacramento or L.A. City Hall can claim they weren't warned.