San Jose mayor days from filing state pension measure

By John Woolfolk

San Jose Mercury News

STANFORD -- San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Wednesday he hopes to file papers within days for a statewide constitutional measure that would empower governments to trim pension benefits for their workers' remaining years on the job.

Reed, who has been building support for such a measure over the past year, made his remarks as a keynote speaker for the California Public Pension Solutions Conference at the Hoover Institution.

"The government can't afford these benefits, and the employees can't afford these benefits," Reed said.

The two-term mayor said he hopes to file papers for a constitutional amendment in "a couple days," though whether it would go on the ballot in 2014 or 2016 remains to be decided.

"I'd like to do it in 2014," Reed said. "The sooner the better."

Reed won nearly 70 percent approval from San Jose voters for a June 2012 ballot measure that would make city police officers, firefighters, mechanics, planners, librarians and other workers pay up to 16 percent more of their salary toward their pensions to help absorb growing costs to pay down roughly $3 billion in debt in the city's retirement plans.

Measure B also lowered pension benefits for new hires and called for current workers to have the option of switching to a lower benefit for their remaining years on the job, though the city has yet to receive IRS approval for that.

Unions representing city workers have challenged the measure in court, and the case went to trial in July before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Patricia M. Lucas. Her ruling is pending.

The state constitutional measure Reed is seeking would eliminate a "vested rights" doctrine established through a series of court rulings that effectively prevents California governments from ever reducing their workers pensions over their career, protections not afforded private employer retirement plans.

"The vested rights doctrine is being used to challenge even the most modest pension reforms," Reed told the conference.

Unions have called his San Jose measure illegal and the proposed state constitutional measure an attempt to rob cops, teachers and other public employees of promised retirement security and say it will be bankrolled by corporate and conservative interests seeking to squeeze workers.

Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/johnwoolfolk1.