Public employees in San Benito County are breathing easier after
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed off his plan to privatize
California’s public employee pension system Thursday, but they are
still unsure of what the future holds.
Hollister – Public employees in San Benito County are breathing easier after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed off his plan to privatize California’s public employee pension system Thursday, but they are still unsure of what the future holds.
Schwarzenegger, who launched an aggressive pension reform initiative in January, said he would wait until the June 2006 election to put it on the ballot if lawmakers didn’t craft a compromise measure in coming months.
“Privatizing our pension is a signal to me that he (Schwarzenegger) doesn’t care about teachers. Our pension system is the one thing they can count on to make up for a lacking salary,” said Michal Cook, Hollister Elementary School Teachers Association president and a kindergarten teacher at Ladd Lane School.
Schwarzenegger, who has called the state’s pension system “another government program out of control,” aimed to reel in escalating state contributions to public employee retirements by making new employees after 2007 use 401(k)-style individual investment accounts.
Teachers, for example, pay 8 percent of their salaries into retirement accounts, while the district matches that and the state contributes the equivalent of 2 percent of a teacher’s pay, according to Cook.
Schwarzenegger’s scrapped initiative would have taken away that 2 percent contribution, she said.
The state’s contribution to public employee retirements this year is $2.6 billion, up from $160 million in 2000.
“I don’t know why he targets nurses, police, firefighters and teachers,” said Clete Bradford, chapter president of the San Benito High Teachers Association and a math teacher at the high school. “People (in these professions) try to make a difference. Why is he preying on this group?”
If the state needs money, it should look toward corporations that are not paying property taxes as a source of revenue, Bradford said.
Schwarzenegger cited “misconceptions” Thursday by public safety workers that his pension measure would strip them of death and disability benefits as he withdrew the initiative. He also offered to work with critics to develop a new pension plan that would protect workers and save taxpayers money.
“Let’s pull it back and do it better,” said Schwarzenegger, who was flanked by more than a dozen police, fire and local government leaders. “That’s what this is about. We’re saying, ‘Let’s do it better.'”
The move followed days of meetings with police and fire chiefs and survivors of firefighters and police officers killed in the line of duty, all of whom expressed concerns that the ballot language opened possibilities of employees losing death and disability payments.
Schwarzenegger said that was not his intention, but noted that most public safety officials perceived it as a potential result. The attorney general’s office, analyzing the proposed ballot language, had earlier reached the same conclusion.
“The bottom line is (Schwarzenegger) took and accepted the offer to work it out legislatively. That’s the right and best thing,” said San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill.
The retirement system for public safety workers needs to be reformed, Hill said. But the interpretation of the initiative as taking away benefits from widows and children of police officers and firefighters killed in duty was an unacceptable compromise, he said.
“We’re the ones who go out 24 hours a day, seven days a week and take on the most dangerous aspects of society,” Hill said. “We don’t feel that milk inspectors – an important job, someone with enforcement duties – is part of public safety. We have to be able to make changes in what constitutes someone in public safety – people who should be eligible and people who are not, It’s becoming diluted.
The announcement comes amid an escalating political war over the issue. Wednesday, the state Senate rejected Schwarzenegger’s nominee to the California State Teachers Retirement System in retaliation for the governor’s Feb. 11 firing of four nominees who opposed his position a week earlier. The CalPERS board voted 9-3 on Feb. 16 to oppose the plan, with CalPERS President Rob Feckner saying it “relates to the very survival of CalPERS.”
Luke Roney covers education and agriculture for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or at lr****@fr***********.com.
