San Jose pension fight heads to the courtroom
The city of San Jose and its police union have filed dueling lawsuits over the cuts in public employee pensions approved by city voters on Tuesday, disputing whether the measure violates the city's contractual obligations to its workers.
Measure B, passed with a 70 percent majority, requires employees to choose by June 2013 between paying more into their pension plan or paying the same amount but reducing future benefits. The measure also allows the city to freeze cost-of-living increases in pensions for up to five years in a fiscal emergency.
The city filed its suit in federal court Tuesday, seeking a ruling that Measure B would be a lawful means of averting a fiscal crisis "caused in large part by the climbing and unsustainable cost of employee benefit programs."
San Jose's payments for employee retirement have soared from $107 million in 2009-10 to $245 million in 2011-12 and are projected to be $319 million in 2014-15, or nearly one-fourth of the city's general fund, its lawyers said.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/07/BASG1OUOCJ.DTL
Meanwhile, the city libraries (except the one downtown) are open only four days a week. The San Jose Mercury News reported in March 2007: "Swelling personnel costs - currently almost two-thirds of San Jose's nearly $1 billion operating budget - are key to an ongoing deficit that has plagued the city for the last half decade." Also from Feb. 2004: "Growing retirement costs to fall on S.J. taxpayers". For this election cycle, the SJMN editorialized for Measure B: "To restore police patrols, library hours and community centers in San Jose, voters need to approve Measure B. Current pension programs are not sustainable. Their costs have tripled in a decade even as the number of employees has shrunk. "
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