Cut public employee pensions, California voters say

By John Woolfolk and Steven Harmon  Posted: 11/09/2011

 

From San Francisco to Modesto, California voters Tuesday sent a strong message that they want to cut generous public employee pensions, whose soaring costs are devouring funds for cops, libraries and other services.

The results cheered local officials such as San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who's seeking a March special election on his own controversial pension reform proposal, as well as advocates for a statewide measure aimed at slashing the costs of public retirement packages.

"It certainly demonstrates solid public support for pension reform," Reed said Wednesday. "Even in a labor-friendly town like San Francisco, 68 percent said yes."

Yet voters Tuesday also signaled that there are limits to how far they're willing to crack down on police, firefighters, teachers, librarians and other public workers. San Francisco voters approved the milder of two pension reform proposals on the ballot, one backed by the mayor and many labor leaders. They rejected a tougher measure by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, author of a similar measure that failed last year.

And in Ohio, voters who had swept Republicans into the statehouse a year ago rallied behind public worker unions to dump a GOP law that curtailed government employee rights to bargain over compensation.

"I think it's a potent political issue, but it helps to engage unions instead of giving them a stiff arm," said Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Californians for Retirement Security, which represents public employee unions. Voters "understand the need to change the system but don't see the need to take a wrecking ball to it."

Public pensions have grabbed voter attention in recent years as the sour economy drags down tax revenues and the investment returns that were supposed to pay for large pension boosts granted to cops, firefighters and other government workers in the more prosperous late 1990s.

At the municipal level, sharply rising costs to fill multibillion dollar gaps between what governments promised their retirees and what they have set aside in pension funds have eaten into budgets for basic services.

It's a particularly acute problem in California.

San Jose is facing an 11th straight multimillion dollar budget deficit next year. Its pension costs have soared from $73 million a decade ago to $245 million this year and are expected to reach $432 million in four years, almost half the size of the city's general operating fund.

While revenues have risen 20 percent in a decade, staffing has plummeted to cover rising employee costs. San Jose earlier this year laid off 66 police officers -- the first such layoffs in its history, while a new police substation and several branch libraries sit empty for lack of staffing.

Similar tales of woe can be heard in other cities to varying degree -- most dramatically in Vallejo, which declared bankruptcy in 2008. Voters there repealed a "binding arbitration" law last year over heavy union opposition that city officials blamed for unaffordable pay and benefit deals with employees.

Palo Alto voters overwhelmingly repealed a similar arbitration law Tuesday, as did voters in San Luis Obispo earlier this year. San Jose voters agreed to sharply limit arbitration last year.

In Modesto, voters strongly approved a nonbinding measure calling for public employees to receive 401(k)-type retirement plans similar to what most privately employed workers have, in which the employer contributes toward savings but doesn't promise a regular retirement income.

Modesto voters by even wider margins endorsed nonbinding measures to raise public employee retirement ages and make it harder for them to boost their pensions by artificially inflating their pay in their final year.

"This is on everyone's mind," said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State political science professor. "The question is how far do you go?"

Gerston agreed with other political analysts that Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich overreached in backing a bill to curtail collective bargaining rights. Though polls showed support for some aspects, such as making workers pay more for their benefits, critics said it went too far. Unions saw it as a life-or-death battle and heavily outspent the law's backers in their successful referendum repealing it.

The labor victory in Ohio, however, doesn't necessarily mean that a blue state like California is immune to public employee rollbacks, though achieving them will take a much more nuanced approach than the GOP in Ohio took.

Already, labor groups in California are gearing up for a major fight next year over an attempt to restrict their ability to collect members' dues for political purposes. Initiatives to roll back labor's collective bargaining rights, raise taxes and retirement age on public employee groups and to overhaul the pension system are all in the works and will test labor's political stamina, if not the public's views toward unions next year.  Continued at ….. http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_19302567

 

 

Palo Alto voters favor Measures D and E

Brown risks legal 'minefield' with rollbacks to current employees' pensions

Document: Legislative analyst's response to Brown pension plan, Nov. 2011

San Jose faces December decision on pensions

Pension reform group's initiatives may spur Legislature

 

 

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Rhode Island House and Senate Finance Committees Pass Sweeping Pension Overhaul Bill (Ted Nesi / WPRI-TV)

Finance committees pass RI pension bill

Measure now heads to chambers vote next week

Updated: Friday, 11 Nov 2011, By Ted Nesi, WPRI.com Reporter

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi's Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The House and Senate finance committees passed the sweeping Raimondo-Chafee pension overhaul bill on Thursday night, setting the stage for votes by the full chambers next week.

The House Finance Committee voted 13-2 in favor of the bill, with Rep. John Carnevale, D-Providence, and Rep. William San Bento Jr., D-Pawtucket, voting against. The House committee met for less than a half-hour.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 10-1 in favor, with the lone opposing vote cast by Sen. Frank Ciccone, D-Providence, spokesman Greg Pare said.

All state lawmakers will return to the Statehouse next Thursday, Nov. 17, for floor debates and votes on the bill. The House will start at 2 p.m. and the Senate will start at 4 p.m.

"We'll do better on the floor," Carnevale told union lobbyists as he shook their hands following the committee's approval of the measure, which was bitterly opposed by labor leaders. Thousands of workers and retirees protested it in a rally on Tuesday.

The amended bill unveiled Wednesday evening suspends cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for all workers, though an interim COLA may be awarded every fifth year if the pension fund's investments preform well. It also raises the official retirement age to 67 with some exceptions and puts most workers into a hybrid plan.

"The proposed plan would be unprecedented, both in terms of the employees it would affect and the scope and scale of changes to their benefits," the Pew Center on the States, a Washington-based research group, wrote in an analysis of the proposal last week.

The bill would immediately reduce the state-run pension system's unfunded liability from $7.3 billion to roughly $4.1 billion, and save taxpayers roughly $300 million in additional deposits to the fund in 2012-13, according to an analysis by the House and Senate fiscal advisors. The pension fund's shortfall would gradually be closed over a 25-year period.

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/politics/finance-committees-pass-ri-pension-bill

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Ohio vote shows unions still a political force

November 9, 2011 By The Associated Press  SAM HANANEL

WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Union leaders said Wednesday their success in striking down an Ohio law curbing collective bargaining rights for public workers points to an energized labor movement that could be pivotal in helping Democrats win battleground states in next year's election.

"What happened in Ohio last night matters everywhere," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "I think the governors in the other states ought to take heed of this and if they don't, they do so at their own peril."

The vote marked one of the biggest victories in decades for a labor movement that has been on the defensive all year, as unions fight measures in Ohio, Wisconsin and other states that would roll back pensions and benefits for public employees and weaken union clout. Unions are looking to channel that energy into other states -- including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Florida -- where they believe voters are rejecting GOP policies that have threatened unions.

Ohio voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected the law limiting the bargaining abilities of more than 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public workers. More than 61 percent voted against the measure promoted by Republican Gov. John Kasich. Turnout was the highest ever for an off-year election in Ohio and poll numbers show voters rejected the law by wide margins in nearly every part of the state.

Labor officials said the numbers point to trouble for GOP presidential candidates like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who embraced the anti-union measure on the campaign trail.

"The vote last night was really a roadmap for the Democrats if they're willing to use it for 2012," said AFL-CIO political director Mike Podhorzer.

Kasich had said the law would help hold down taxes and make the state more appealing to business. We Are Ohio, the largely union-funded opponent coalition, painted the issue as a threat to public safety and middle-class workers, spending $24 million on a campaign that included millions of dollars on TV ads filled with images of firefighters, police officers, teachers and nurses.  Continued at …..

http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ohio-vote-shows-unions-still-a-political-force-1.3307053