HOT NEWS BULLETIN: Good guys win a big one

JIm Unland, president of the San Jose POA, expressed relief the ballot measure to destroy pensions will not be on the ballot this year.
But he’s cautious, he says. “They will never give up. We have to keep on fighting.”

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed will not get to destroy your pension this year. But stay tuned, the fight isn’t over.

Cops all over California, but especially in San Jose, greeted the headline last Friday in the San Jose Mercury News with a sigh of relief.

“California pension initiative scrapped for 2014 in big defeat for San Jose mayor”

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed on Friday abandoned plans for a November statewide pension reform initiative that was to be the crowning achievement of his final year in office, a victory for unions that had made fighting the plan a top priority.

Mike Rosenberg, a reporter for the newspaper writes that, “Reed maintained that he and a handful of other city leaders across California who had joined him in support would continue to pursue the proposed constitutional amendment for 2016. He blamed an unfavorable ballot summary from the attorney general and the upcoming mid-April deadline for qualifying a November initiative for the delay.

But many doubt the initiative will be any more viable in two years. Reed struggled to raise the millions of dollars needed to hire signature gatherers while unions mounted an aggresive campaign to defeat it, even enlisting dozens of other California mayors to line up against it.

“We’re taking on the political machine that’s the most powerful force in California,” Reed said of organized labor. “You have to expect that they’re going to mount an aggressive campaign at every step of the way.”

San Jose POA President Jim Unland expressed relief but was also cautious.

“This fight is not over yet,” he said. “I don’t know if it will ever be over. They are not going to give up.”

Earlier efforts to secure statewide pension reforms at the ballot box in 2012 also collapsed after advocates declared that the attorney general’s ballot summary made it impossible to raise campaign funds needed to gather qualifying signatures.

Read the entire report.

“I think the best opportunity was this year, and obviously the money wasn’t there, and that has to be the principle reason he backed off,” said Terry Christensen, a San Jose State professor emeritus of political science. “There are people around the country who can write those checks but it’s interesting that they haven’t come forward yet.”

While there was no independent polling on the measure, Reed maintained private surveys indicated strong support in the two-thirds range, while union critics proclaimed their own research showed little public enthusiasm.

Reed, a fiscally-conservative Democrat, gained national recognition and the enmity of the government unions that bankroll his party when he won passage in 2012 of a San Jose measure reducing pensions for new city hires and making current employees either pay more for their retirement or choose a less generous plan. He has since traveled the state and to the nation’s capital advocating changes to government pensions whose soaring costs have sucked up funds for municipal services and contributed to a handful of city bankruptcies.

But city unions sued to overturn Reed’s Measure B, and a judge in December blocked the key provision that would make current city workers pay more toward their pensions, citing a series of earlier rulings that effectively guarantee government workers the same or better retirement plan throughout their careers.

Even before that ruling, Reed began gathering support for the statewide initiative that would change that doctrine, allowing elected officials to negotiate pension reductions that would apply only to employees’ future years on the job.

But public employee unions said the measure might be dead for 2016, as well.

“We continue to believe that the bargaining table — not the ballot box — is the proper place to address the budget challenges facing our communities and state,” David Low, chairman of the union opposition group, Californians for Retirement Security, said in a statement. “California’s teachers, firefighters, school bus drivers, nurses and other public employees remain committed to working to ensure that our public pension systems are healthy and provide the retirement security we have earned.”

Jim Unland: he blamed the Attorney General. Our problem is theat al Pers is raising their rates Any city that’s in Calpers has to do their contribution to Calpers. Tthat now is 32% of payroll. In several years that will go up to 50% of payroll.

Reignite debate on pensions.