Massive Pension Reform Plan emerges from the Horseshoe

by Brian Leubitz

The California legislative session is the longest in the nation, but yet somehow it always comes down to the last week. We get a bunch of gut and amend bills and bam! It’s on like donkey Kong.  We’ve seen that with CEQA and workers’ comp in the last few weeks, and now it is pensions. There a number of moving parts, but here are a few points:

Starting next year, most newly hired public workers would be eligible for retirement with full benefits at age 62 instead of the current 55. Local police and firefighters hired on or after Jan. 1 would be eligible for full benefits at age 57, while currently employed public safety workers would still be able to retire with full benefits at age 50. (SF Chronicle)

This all has some serious consequences. But, once again, let me process nerd this one out. In short, the process was entirely lacking. The Governor and the Democratic legislative leaders kind of plopped this thing down a few days before the end of the session. While there has been a lot of pension discussion, there haven’t been the traditional collective bargaining that is traditional of these types of concessions. CTA’s Dean Vogel had this to say:

We have been working in good faith with the governor and Legislature to obtain pension solutions that will move our state forward. This plan does not achieve that goal. This process has not been transparent, it does not recognize the tremendous cuts that have already been made to our schools, and it does not respect the disproportionate impact it will have, largely on women working in our classrooms. Instead, it will make it more difficult to attract and retain experienced educators to our classrooms.

Look, I don’t think that it will surprise anybody to hear that pension changes are something of a fait accompli at this point. But as this happens, we need to make sure we are doing it the right way. With the right process and the proper consideration for our public employees, nurses, teachers, firefighters that do some very demanding jobs.