Oddly upbeat California pension reformers regroup in Sacramento
By Steven Greenhut | California’s Democratic leaders and their public-sector union allies have been staving off serious pension reforms thanks to their domination of the Legislature, their control of every state constitutional office and series of favorable court decisions. You really couldn’t blame the reform movement for giving up and moving on to other things — or moving out to other states. Voters, for instance, overwhelmingly approved San Jose’s 2012 pension reforms but the courts gutted the measure thanks to the so-called California Rule that doesn’t allow officials to cut benefits for public employees even on a go-forward basis. That city’s bold Democratic mayor, Chuck Reed, sought to take a measure to the statewide ballot that would allow such reductions, but the state attorney general killed that effort with an unfairly written ballot summary — and a Sacramento judge just concurred with the AG.
Who has time for this? Why not just let the cities continue to cut back on their services so they can pay for the six-figure pensions they handed out so generously? San Jose recently announced cutbacks of 100 more police officers, with Reed blaming the pension debt. The bankruptcy judge in the Stockton case last week said he has been reading media reports about once-bankrupt Vallejo now possibly heading back toward bankruptcy given that it never touched its pensions and is facing fiscal problems again. The judge wants to look closely at Stockton’s workout plan to see if it will, well, work out. I reported on a fiscal document in October that suggests otherwise. Stockton almost certainly will face a fiscal crisis again in four years even after bankruptcy and a tax hike — at least that’s the view of former Republican Assemblyman and fiscal watchdog Dean Andal.
Yet last week, pension reformers met in Sacramento to plot strategy again. In my U-T San Diego column, I compared it to the Monty Python scene from the Death of Mary Queen of Scots. Mary’s assailants think she’s dead, but she pipes up: “No, I’m not.†And she’s downright perky, too. Likewise, there was no doom and gloom in Sacramento. Former San Diego councilman Carl DeMaio, leader of San Diego’s pension-reform effort that led to overwhelming support for a cap on pensionable pay in June 2012, is pushing a statewide ballot initiative for November 2016. He wants to build county organizations to support the measure — and is championing some local measures, too. Ventura County, for instance, is following San Diego’s model — caps on pay, 401 (k) plans for new hires, protection of death benefits for public safety.
The San Diego model is being implemented and has so far withstood union challenges because DeMaio chose not to do as Reed did and challenge existing precedent. It doesn’t go as far, but it is still alive and kicking — despite continuing efforts by a union-dominated state agency to invalidate the law. Here we see state officials rigging the game at every stage, yet DeMaio and others remain remarkably upbeat and even perky. They know pension reform is the right thing and they keep moving forward hoping that eventually more public officials will decide to put California taxpayers and residents above union demands.
Still, this is exhausting and fruitless work. In essence, the critics of an overly generous pension system are trying to save the system from itself by assuring that it remains properly funded. But even as the numbers look bleak — i.e., a state teacher retirement system that’s falling short in funding by around $4.5 billion a year, which is even acknowledged by Democratic leaders — there’s no rush by the Brown administration or the Legislature to address them. It’s great that the reform movement is still trying, though, even as the irresponsibility of the state’s political leadership becomes more maddening.
Steven Greenhut is the California columnist for U-T San Diego.