In Forest Hill, a Heated Duel over Pension, Benefits Reform
Labor leader Tim Paulson and public defender Jeff Adachi square off over Prop. B
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!”
RB Orbust
Wow, a union guy's worst nightmare- he had to actually face taxpayers. The bottom line is this guy is just doin his job - that is, to try and keep all the money is his guy's pockets.
Problem is, the City has a math problem- deficits as far as the eye can see driven primarily by employee benefits costs.
It is simply wrong to say the pension system is "in wonderful shape" when the City is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in pension cost increases over the next five years and beyond (City Controller estimates), increases that can only be covered by cuts in City services and tax increases on an already overtaxed San Franciso.
No one denies that the $250 million (assuming # correct) in concessions was helpful in fixing the current budget but the concessions were temporary mostly in the form of two years of furlough days and deferred raises. We are back to square one for the 2012-2013 budget. Therefore Prop B changes (employee benefit contribution increases) are not on top of the already $250 million conceded. Prop B kicks in at the expiration of current collective bargaining agreements (where the $250 million was conceded) so any suggestion that Prop B piles on to the concessions already made by City employees is false...
John Smith
Another one-sided propoganda piece published by a huge Prop B supporter who also happens to own the Bay Citizen. This is a bad joke.
Charles Jencks
I am confident that The Bay Citizen, & Elizabeth Lesly Stevens are most interested in all information (that can is corroborated) readers/commenters may have regarding Prop B, &, or anything else relevant to the issues, & debate regarding S.F. employee benefits.
I had hoped that The Bay Citizen's reader's comment's would parallel the high quality of the journalism published here. It would be disappointing to have the enterprise dragged down by vitriol, & partisanship. If you have a reasonable gripe spell it out by providing verifiable factual information that supports your opinion.
Familygal
When I first heard about this proposition, i wanted to find out how the health care part of it would apply to workers. I was dismayed to find out that none of the Proposition's website deals with this in any detail. They also don't use examples of health care premiums from any of the employee unions that already pay a lot for health care, like teachers ($628 for family care, not $228 for the lowest option.)
Then I read on the Chronicle and other sources that the greatest portion of the projected savings from Prop B will come from health care. It's not hard to see that it's a better PR strategy to focus on the pensions because it's easier to drum up taxpayer anger. But it's really about health care, or "benefits" the term they like to use instead, again subtly distancing themselves from health care. Even the Bay Citizen does this, see article above. There is no other benefit on the table here. It's health care. I have to wonder about taxpayers like the one mentioned above who consider themselves as a rightful boss in this situation, and who would cut employees health care. I have one employee and would not ever reduce that benefit. She counts on it. I also don't think many West Side people are very dependent on any of the reduced city services they proclaim to be angry about. Judging by the anti-city employee sentiment comments on all of the local boards, I believe supporters are mostly motivated by spite.
h. brown
Wow,
Giants in first place on September 28th and Hellman joins with Adachi and Gonzalez. Did the poles change polarity too?
My father spent 40 years organizing with the Teamsters while working on the docks in St. Louis. Lord, have things changed. Now the local head of the AFL-CIO (Paulson did this) can go before an SF Board committee and recommend tearing down the old Longshoreman's Hall (where murdered dock workers lay in state) so that a major developer could be granted zoning breaks to block bay views with an over-sized condo for the wealthy.
Mike Casey of Local 2 pushed another 'union backed' proposal to build hotels out into the water ... again, lots of new zoning to allow polluting our shoreline against State law. Screwing with the SF shoreline for all citizens and visitors in exchange for a few nickels into the union brass' coffers.
The same Paulson fights to hand over 700 acres to a crooked politically connected developer (Lennar) along with the only shoreline State park that he figures the blacks he's driving out of town won't need anyway and it makes such a great location for high end condos. He knows that the promise of local jobs will turn out to be a lie.
My point is that they don't make union leaders like they used to. Guys like Paulson are more than happy to sell out the environment, the local economy and their own rank and file for their own personal short term gain.
Giants up 4-2 in 8th with 2 down and Wilson on hill.
h.
bray den
Get information on how to reduce your debt by filing for bankruptcy http://bit.ly/avB0jI
Jamie Whitaker
Layoffs of young people with the lowest seniority working for the City, reduced job opportunities for young people, for those young people who do get a job, they are on a very different benefits and vesting schedule, and at the end of the day, the young people of San Francisco are being handed the bill to pay for the steak dinners eaten by the baby boom generation. How selfish of the labor unions and elected officials opposing Prop. b to not stand up and fight against the pulling up of the opportunIty ladder by the boom generation so that young people are only left with the bills and no opportunities. Shame on us if Prop. B does not pass. Their parents were the "Greatest Generation," and boomers appear to be determined to go down in history as the "Gluttony Generation"
Familygal
Layoff of all kinds of people in the private sector happened too. Do you blame public pensions and health care for that too?
Gordon
Until EVERY City employee has to pay a portion of their pension costs we will have a broken and unfair system. I don't know the best rate, but let's say it is 10%. Every City employee should be paying the same rate into the pension fund. The next part of the plan is they need to work at least 40 years to get the max rate, and that should be capped at $50,000. We should not be paying excessive pensions like what is happening now...
As for healthcare, my employer pays for my coverage, but I have to pay for any dependents, I always thought that was a fair deal. Of course, the City employees also have the added benefit of premium healthcare plans that cover everything...
Hank E. Panky
Perhaps, you can ask your Congressman to take a slight pay cut on his and donate it to the city employees? You know, the little guys at the bottom that make in a year what your Congressman makes in a day?
Just a thought.
Hank E. Panky
Look at them crooks go at it each other...as if. And whichever one of them wins will be handsomely purchased by corporate money and will do exactly the opposite what he said he would do and y'all would be even more screwed than before. But such is the American ways, it seems.
Jim Corrigan
Here's 2300 ex City employees who do not want Pension Reform:
http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e15/5513955.0.pdf