Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

Tim Paulson, Executive Director of the San Francisco Labor Council, and Jeff Adachi, right, debate Proposition B at a meeting of the West Twin Peaks Council on Monday, September 28, 2010

San Francisco Labor Council executive director Tim Paulson and city Public Defender Jeff Adachi squared off last night in what was billed as the first official debate of Adachi’s Proposition B, the controversial November ballot initiative that would require city employees to contribute more to their pension and benefits costs.

Adachi says that the measure would save the city more than $120 million a year and stave off ruinous cuts in government services in coming years. Paulson, whose group is the local arm of the AFL-CIO, says that the city’s pension fund is in “wonderful shape” and does not need saving. He says that asking city workers, who have already made wage concessions of about $250 million, to pay more for health care is unfair.

The debate, at the Forest Hill Clubhouse, was hosted by the West of Twin Peaks Central Council, a consortium of west side community groups.

Leading Prop. B supporter Michael Moritz, the Sequoia Capital venture capitalist, arrived shortly before Adachi and sat quietly on a folding chair in the back of the room for the duration of the debate. Moritz and his wife, novelist Harriet Heyman, were early contributors to Adachi’s effort and have hosted a fundraiser for the measure at their Pacific Heights home. The couple has contributed $245,000 in total. Union groups have pilloried Moritz for his involvement, casting him as a latter-day robber baron intent on making health insurance unaffordable for public-sector workers and their families. Adachi says that Moritz is motivated by his concern for the city’s long-term finances.

Not in attendance at the meeting, but suddenly looming large in the Prop. B campaign, is financier and philanthropist Warren Hellman, who in August donated $50,000 to the effort, making him the third-largest supporter after Moritz and his wife. Through his assistant, Hellman on Monday declined to discuss his support for Prop. B. (Hellman is the chairman of the board of The Bay Citizen, and our editor in chief discusses the news of Hellman's involvement in Prop B. here.)

Paulson arrived alone, and it was a tough evening for him. The crowd was comprised mostly of intensely civic-minded older voters and at at least one member of the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury that released a report in June warning of a “Pension Tsunami” of increased liabilities. Shirley Hansen, a retired mathematician who served on the civil grand jury, spoke briefly before the debate and expressed concern that San Francisco is “four or five years behind San Diego,” where crushing pension obligations have led to open discussion of municipal bankruptcy. Hansen told the crowd that she fears that these employee costs will force San Francisco to “follow Vallejo into bankruptcy.”

Adachi picked up on the bankruptcy theme as he began speaking. The current pension and benefits system for public employees in San Francisco “is not fair,” since public employees enjoy much more lucrative and secure pensions and benefits than their private-sector counterparts, Adachi said. The rich benefits are “bankrupting our city.” Employee costs are eating up a greater and greater share of the city’s operating fund each year, he said, leading to widespread reduction in services like summer school and hitting residents with big fee increases for such things as parking and park usage. “You can’t turn around without someone picking your pocket in this town,” he said.

Adachi has been criticized for not consulting labor leaders before drafting his measure, which union groups and many city politicians have disparaged as poorly written. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold E. Kahn in late August removed a provision from Prop. B that he said was draconian and would intimidate city workers who dared to challenge Prop. B in court.

Adachi said that, given what he views as the political realities of San Francisco, any attempt to hammer out a proposal with labor’s involvement would have been futile.

As Paulson took his turn, it was clear that he felt strongly that the city’s unions have already done a great deal to help ease the city’s financial crisis. He argued that Prop. B actually had very little to do with pensions (it is prominently billed as “pension reform” in its ads), but is instead a stealth “attack on the health care of public sector workers."

San Francisco, Paulson said, “is the city of health care,” where more has been done to offer universal health care than anywhere else in the country.

Paulson pooh-poohed suggestions that the city’s pension fund or its general finances were in dire shape. “This is not Vallejo, San Diego.” He blamed Wall Street for “creat[ing] some horrific problems” that temporarily drove down the value of the pension fund’s assets. He says that Adachi’s numbers are based on old data from the nadir of the financial crisis, and that the pension fund’s finances have started to improve. “These things are all moving back in the right direction,” he said. “We are going to get out of this stuff.”

Paulson said that all of the city’s major political figures were united in their opposition to Prop. B: “Not a single public official has endorsed [Prop.] B. As a matter of fact, they are all against it.”

(Two prominent former elected officials are in Adachi's camp. Former Mayor Willie Brown and former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez appear prominently in a pro-Prop. B flyer passed out at the debate.)

Paulson praised the constructive bargaining relationship among the mayor’s office, the board of supervisors, and the city unions, which he referred to as the “city family here in San Francisco.”

“This is a city partnership [of] labor, Board of Supervisors, the mayor, work[ing] super hard to move things forward. This is all about working in partnership with the city.”

Some in the audience reacted angrily to his description of how the city is run. One woman asked Paulson where taxpayers fit into this equation since, she said with some ire, they underwrite the funding of these agreements.

Paulson failed to answer her question to her satisfaction. “That’s not how government works,” he explained. Angrier still, the woman shouted: “I’m not part of the game! I just get the bill!”