If I can't have a pension and decent benefits why should they?

[haele]

63. Pension issues in San Diego were not the fault of the union...

What San Diego did with their pension issues was based on much of the political shenanigans between City Management, the Developers, and some high level City Union members that surrounded around the first major downtown re-development and the Republican National convention in the 1996. The Republican Mayor at the time (and subsequent Republican Mayors) leveraged funding the pension (along with other union benefits) to balance the city budget and pay for popular city initiatives during the late 1990's, claiming that these initiatives that tended to favor the developers and business owners - the Ballpark, Qualcomm Stadium, the Convention Center, etc... - would be able to pay back the funding shortfalls in the budget. Which of course, never happened - the city became on the hook for Charger tickets that did not sell, tourism never really took off, various economic bubbles that supported good-paying jobs in the city burst (especially the tech bubble...), Reganomics and austerity initiatives dried up the tax base, immigration issues and serious private sector wage stagnation and/or reduction across a wider population than was seeing benefits. San Diego's city bond rating plummeted, causing even more shortfalls as no one wanted to invest in a failing city. The wealthy were taking their money and leaving, as wealthy people tend to do.
The other issue was that there was a "voter approved" measure that allowed the San Diego City Employee's Pension Fund to shift their funds from dividend-paying bonds with a 25% cap on stocks to however the Fund managers felt was the best - primarily stocks and funds that did not have to pay dividends that would be rolled back into the fund.
Because of course, the voters knew better - stock prices would always soar up and up and up, and you didn't need to invest conservatively anymore - everyone's going to be a winner at the Wall Street Casino...

And of course, there is always the issue of "those at the top got outrageous pensions" - because in the 1990's, the Firefighters and Police Union members of the city's Pension board allowed for a second payments above the normal pension payment from individual workers that were to be matched by the City so that a person could potentially retire on as much or even a bit more for the first decade or so afterwards because they could afford to pay more into their pension over the last five to ten years of their employment with the city. If you were making $80K - $120K a year in San Diego - usually a senior position - you could pretty much afford to put at least $40K - $50K a year into your pension on the expectation that you would get $80K - $100K a year in retirement from the City- while most people (including most of the City workforce) - were looking at retiring on $35K - $45K a year pension, plus social security and whatever other retirement IRAs or annuities they might have been able to invest in. And if you had a working spouse, you could put even more in and still live pretty well.

So, you had increased benefits - the ability to put more money in, which favored the few high-earning City Employees over the average jane and joe manning the desks, fixing potholes and running environmental safety tests - and decreased funding in a shaky pension vehicle.

From 2005 - 2008, the City Attorney tried to fix the problem and still keep the pension system intact for the workers, but the developers and business interests who didn't want to pay for all the benefits they reaped off the backs of the city workers got rid of him the next election. And now, 2.1 Billion dollars in deficit and 8.1 million dollars in legal costs later, voters are "punishing" those evil low level city workers by forcing them into an increasingly unstable 401K system that will ensure they're going to have to depend on Social Security when they retire, rather than punish the people who really caused the process and allow the workers who do their job feel like it's good to be loyal because one will be able live with some form of dignity after one retires.

The city will never recover that money, nor will it's workers ever recover their trust in their employer. Business interests - especially the developers - have made sure that they will never be liable for the multi-million dollar scam they pulled over on the city, the city employees, and the voters.

Haele