Richard Parks/The Bay Citizen

Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan announced her candidacy for mayor June 30, 2010

Seizing upon a once-untouchable issue that is suddenly popular at the ballot box, a pair of Democratic public officials in San Francisco and Oakland is attempting to tackle public pension reform, placing them in direct confrontation with labor unions at the foundation of their party.

And, at a time when Bay Area cities and households are facing unprecedented economic problems, these high-profile initiatives could give the political ambitions of the two Democrats a boost.

Jeff Adachi, the progressive, headline-grabbing public defender in San Francisco—and rumored mayoral contender— is pushing a ballot measure that would increase public workers’ contributions to their own pension and health care plans.

Adachi’s proposed measure would require thousands of city employees who currently pay nothing to contribute 9 percent of their salaries toward their pensions. Police officers and firefighters, whose pension contributions were raised to 9 percent from 7.5 percent by an overwhelming ballot vote sponsored by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and Mayor Gavin Newsom in June, would see their contributions bumped up to 10 percent.

Tuesday is the deadline to submit the minimum 46,000 signatures necessary to place the initiative on the November ballot. As of Monday, Adachi said he had well over 50,000.

Meanwhile in Oakland, Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who recently announced her candidacy for mayor, is pitching a November ballot measure that would make new Oakland police officers pay 9 percent. 

Oakland recently laid off 80 police officers to help close a $30 million budget deficit. The move came after the city failed to negotiate give-backs from the police union, the only city workers’ union that does not pay into its own pension plan.

“It’s a huge problem and a problem that gets worse every year,” Kaplan said in an interview Friday. “It’s first and foremost an issue for the financial stability of Oakland.”

Kaplan said the story of Vallejo, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008 amid soaring pension costs, was “part of what inspired me.” She estimates that her proposal would have added $7.8 million to Oakland’s coffers this year.

Adachi, in an interview, said that he was “terrified” of San Francisco sliding into Vallejo’s plight. The budget at his public defender’s office has already been cut 40 percent in recent years, he said.

San Francisco’s pension costs have increased by 85 percent in the past five years and will skyrocket from $413 million in 2010 to $1 billion in 2015, according to a June report by the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury. His measure could slow down the increase by saving the city $170 million a year, Adachi said.

For almost a decade, Adachi cultivated a reputation in San Francisco as part of a rising generation of progressives that challenged the more moderate, established power structure represented by men like former Mayor Willie Brown, California Democratic Party Chair John L. Burton, and later, Newsom.

Labor, a powerful interest group in San Francisco, helped propel their ascent, and now divisions are emerging. Matt Gonzalez, the former Green Party supervisor and the progressives’ mayoral candidate in 2004, is backing Adachi’s initiative and has issued a challenge to publicly debate Tim Paulson, the head of the San Francisco Labor Council. Paulson has yet to accept.

Adachi described the ballot campaign as fraught with political risk. When asked by reporters, he always says that the public defender’s office is the only seat he is interested in. But there are populist, anti-City Hall strains in his rhetoric that suggest ambition beyond the ballot measure and, perhaps, a candidacy in its embryonic stage.

“We’re the underdog camp here and we’re relying on a grassroots campaign,” Adachi said. “The city needs somebody to stand up.”

Labor leaders have publicly decried the tide of pension proposals as attacks against the lowest-paid city employees. But in private conversations in recent months they have conceded that in the midst of a recession, a tide of pension reform initiatives would handily win at the ballot as voter resentment builds.

Adachi said that in previous years, the covenant in public sector work was that pay may lag behind the private sector, but it would be well-compensated by generous pensions.

Adachi said that now, “especially with the recession, the reverse is often true,” and yet pension payouts continue to soar.

In June, a ballot measure sponsored by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and Mayor Newsom that raised the contribution level for public safety employees and readjusted how pensions disbursements are calculated. The measure was approved overwhelmingly by San Francisco voters. Elsbernd's attack on Muni salaries, in the form of another November ballot that would subject the transportation workers’ union to collective bargaining, is also expected to easily pass.

For rank and file union members the wave of anti-union sentiment is disconcerting.

“I think he’s doing this for political reasons,” said Brenda Barros, a clerk at San Francisco General, who pointed out that Adachi is exempt from his own pension reform plan and continues to request money for the public defender’s office.

“If he thinks the budget is so out of hand, why would he be asking for money for himself?” Barros said. “They’re bashing workers and in this economy what we get is not outrageous.”

Adachi’s proposal has sent labor and progressives on the board scrambling. Supervisors Avalos, Mirkarimi, Campos, Maxwell and others on the board are hashing out an alternate proposal with labor, said Roxane Sanchez, president of SEIU Local 1021.

It is perhaps too late. With apparently enough signatures in hand for Tuesday’s deadline and a rosy outlook at the polls in November, Adachi doesn’t mind a bit of scorched-earth politics.

From Newsom to the board of supervisors, he vocally blasted City Hall for being beholden to labor interests. He said he skipped the legislative process precisely because he thought it would be “watered down” by supervisors.

“You wouldn’t exactly call it corruption, but it’s a form of pay to be elected,” he said. “People look at me and say, ‘but you’re a lefty progressive.’ Well I didn’t come in with the union leadership’s blessing then and I don’t owe them anything now.”