San Diego Union-Tribue: San Diego City Pension Battle Underway

Pension ballot battle pitched over signature-gathering

By Craig Gustafson
San Diego Union-Tribune
7 p.m., June 26, 2011

A furious fight is underway over a proposal that would essentially phase out San Diego’s current pension plan in favor of a 401(k) model for most city workers — and it hasn’t even qualified for the June 2012 ballot yet.

The proposed initiative is part of rising tide of pension rollbacks nationwide and the general consensus is that voters will support it if given the opportunity.

That’s why labor unions and business leaders are currently pitched in a fight over the collection of 94,000-plus signatures needed by October to place the “Comprehensive Pension Reform” initiative before city voters.

The conflict is playing out in front of local Targets, Walmarts, Vons and CVS stores where paid signature-gatherers try to convince passers-by to sign the petition. In some cases standing next to them are volunteers, mostly union workers, urging the potential signers to educate themselves before giving their John Hancock to an initiative that would leave future city firefighters without a guaranteed pension.

Both sides accuse the other of spreading lies in order to sway voters and the lax rules that govern the state’s initiative process leave each largely helpless to stop the flow of misinformation. To that end, the pro-business Lincoln Club hired a private investigator to secretly record exchanges outside stores while a union-backed group says it has audio recordings of petitioners misrepresenting what the measure would do.

John Nienstedt, a pollster with Competitive Edge Research who often works with Republicans, said there is a reason why both sides are being so aggressive at such an early stage. His firm conducted a poll in February of 702 likely city voters and asked them whether they favored a plan that is essentially the one currently being proposed. The results were 70 percent in favor, 20 percent against and 10 percent undecided, he said.

“It means that the electorate is ready for these reforms and they’ll vote for them,” he said.

Supporters of the proposed ballot measure — including Mayor Jerry Sanders and City Council members Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer — say it will end the city’s pension woes for future generations by temporarily capping pay for current workers and switching all new hires except police officers to a 401(k)-style plan. A fiscal analysis is expected soon.

Labor leaders call it a punitive measure that decimates retirement benefits for future city workers who are currently ineligible for Social Security and strips pensions from new firefighters. The city may also face recruiting and retention problems if it offers far less lucrative benefits than other cities, they say.

The passion on both sides has led to the storefront confrontations.

T.J. Zane, president of the Lincoln Club, said he received feedback from signature-gatherers that they were being harassed by union workers so he hired a private investigator to record the encounters. One video shows several people holding signs in a circle around one signature-gatherer. The second shows two men who imply they are firefighters repeatedly interrupting one gatherer while he explains the ballot measure.

The videos, both shot June 11, don't depict anything more than a mostly civil back-and-forth exchange between the two sides, but proponents and opponents of the initiative say other confrontations have been more heated.

“Clearly they realize the impact, the significance of the reforms that are being proposed ... It’s logical, I suppose, but not defensible that they should go out and try to interfere with the democratic process,” Zane said.

Frank De Clercq, head of the city firefighters union, hadn’t seen the video but said there’s nothing wrong with people exercising their free-speech rights.

“If they are in fact firefighters and they’re off duty, do they not have a right to stand out there like anybody else and ask people not to sign something that is going to hurt the city’s ability to recruit and retain firefighters?” he said.

Kyle Haverback, spokesman for the labor-backed “Just Say No San Diego” campaign, said unpaid volunteers, mostly union workers, have been trying to correct the lies by petitioners. The most common falsehood, he said, is for petitioners to tell signers that firefighters won’t lose their pensions under the plan.

“There’s a lot of deception out there and we’re asking people to take a critical look at what they’re being asked to sign and to have all the facts,” Haverback said. “We had to be there to tell people the truth.”

The signature-gatherers — who are typically subcontractors paid $2 or less per signature — aren’t the only ones accused of misleading the public.

In a recent letter to union members, San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council leader Lorena Gonzalez urged them not to sign the “deceptive, anti-worker” initiative. She also asked them to tell family members, neighbors and friends to do likewise and report to the union if they see anyone collecting signatures for the initiative.

But the letter also says the initiative would leave police officers “without any guaranteed retirement benefits” despite the fact that the proposal does no such thing. The proposal does say a City Council majority could switch new police hires to a 401(k) in the future, a move that could be done today even without the initiative.
In an interview, Gonzalez said it was fair and honest to include police because Councilman DeMaio, one of the proposal’s main proponents, has repeatedly said he wants to end police pensions as well.

“Our goal is just to educate people because there is no official way ... to ensure that people understand what they’re signing,” Gonzalez said. “We want to make sure that that doesn’t happen, that there aren’t a massive amount of people tricked into signing things by being given specifics that aren’t correct.”

Tony Manolatos, spokesman for the Comprehensive Pension Reform campaign committee, said the union’s goal is not to educate and it’s guilty of spreading bad information.

“If you look at the letter and what they’re doing in front of supermarkets and Targets, it’s obvious that they’re doing whatever they can to prevent this from getting on the ballot,” he said.

The campaign must submit 94,346 valid signatures from the city’s nearly 629,000 registered voters, or 15 percent, to qualify the initiative for the ballot.