Negating the Vote by Steven Greenhut - City Journal
Monday, August 27, 2012
Public-employee unions try again to shoot down pension reform.24 August 2012Public-sector unions are trumpeting a new report that suggests San Jose officials overstated the city’s unfunded pension liabilities—even as those officials championed a successful June 5 ballot initiative to cut pension benefits for public employees. The report’s author, California state auditor Elaine Howle, says she fears that people were misled by official pronouncements about the city’s pension debt as they headed to the polls and approved Measure B with a 70 percent majority. “Reporting multiple retirement cost projections in a short period may have caused confusion among the city’s stakeholders attempting to make informed decisions,” Howle’s report argues. “It is unclear which retirement cost projection the voters relied on, if any, when they voted for these changes.”
Howle’s audit came at the request of a group of irate Democratic state legislators, and it reads like an attempt to support union officials as they seek to invalidate the popular initiative. The unions argue that Measure B rolls back pension benefits for current employees, which state law forbids. But San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed contends that charter cities have authority to make changes to pension benefits, pointing out that San Jose’s charter includes this language: “the Council may at any time, or from time to time, amend or otherwise change any retirement plan or plans or adopt or establish a new or different plan or plans for all or any officers or employees.” Regardless of the legal arguments, the unions—in San Jose and in San Diego, where voters also passed pension reform in June—are trying to build a public-relations campaign around the idea that direct democracy is somehow undemocratic.
