There is some rare good news from California today in the fight to rein in Public Sector Inc. A proposal to move all government employees -- minus police officers -- from defined-benefit public pension to 401(k) style defined-contribution plans has qualified for next June's ballot.
This would be sensible policy virtually anywhere in the nation, but it's especially prudent for California's second largest city, which has a pension deficit of $2.1 billion, equal to 75 percent of the city's annual budget, as I've chronicled here in the past.
Particularly ironic in the San Diego Union-Tribune's report on the story is this quote about the $1.1 million spent by the initiative's supporters, courtesy of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council's Lorena Gonzales:
Particularly ironic in the San Diego Union-Tribune's report on the story is this quote about the $1.1 million spent by the initiative's supporters, courtesy of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council's Lorena Gonzales:
"Obviously when you have that much money at your disposal and you use your wealth to create an attack and to mislead voters about causes of the economic crisis that San Diego and everybody else is facing, yeah, you can qualify a measure," she said "Unfortunately, democracy can be bought and they've proved that."We'd like to gently remind Ms. Gonzales that California's major public employees unions spent nearly $400 million dollars on state politics in the last decade -- far more than any other special interest. We look forward to seeing how much money these paupers throw at the San Diego initiative before next June.
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