Gerry Shih/The Bay Citizen

Mayor Edwin Lee

At a time when public employee pay and benefits have become a flashpoint for partisan political battles around the country, Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco claimed a significant victory this week with his announcement of a consensus plan to tackle the city’s ballooning pension costs.

Flanked by a phalanx of labor leaders, elected officials and business executives — some of whom had nothing to do with the pension reform issue — Lee spoke repeatedly of the value of working toward solutions with all members of the “city family.”

“We’ve always felt that San Francisco will have a special approach,” Lee said. “That’s consensus building, bringing everybody under the tent to talk through what these numbers mean and what we can do to contribute.”

Warren Hellman, the prominent financier who first convened the pension-reform talks six months ago, said he was “thrilled” that unlike other government entities that have sought “adversarial, dictatorial” solutions, San Francisco officials were able to reach a deal with the unions. (Hellman is the chairman of The Bay Citizen but plays no role in editorial operations.)

The deal requires new and existing employees to pay more toward their pension benefits, and the savings to the city will amount to $800 million to $1 billion in the coming decade, Lee said. But in the coming year, the plan would only save about $60 million. The city faces ballooning annual payments to its underfinanced pension plan, and the annual tab will soon climb to $700 million.

With five months until the November election, pension reform is the prism through which every mayoral candidate and public official will be viewed.

Lee has aggressively sought to portray his plan as the only option bearing the city establishment’s stamp of approval, but the stability of his coalition is not assured. Lee is effectively saying that those who do not enthusiastically endorse his plan will be cast out and suffer at the polls.

For months, Lee has been saying that he hoped to convince Jeff Adachi — the city public defender who first brought the pension issue to the fore last year with the failed Proposition B ballot initiative, and who is gathering signatures for a new pension-reform measure for November — to drop his initiative. But Adachi shows no sign of softening.

On Tuesday, Lee warned Adachi that he should fall in line. “Our consensus approach here is the right thing to do,” Lee said. “I leave Adachi to his viewpoint, but I’m sure that he has to recognize that this is the official city family and he doesn’t represent that.”

Adachi does not seem inclined to join Lee’s effort, though, and Adachi’s most significant supporter, Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist, was dismissive of the plan. “Mayor Lee and Warren Hellman have produced a plan that saves one-sixth of what they said two months ago was necessary,” Moritz wrote in an email.

Political analysts, however, said the deal represented a victory not only for Lee — who delivered on the pledge he made when he entered office in January to forge a deal with unions — but also a win for leading mayoral candidates including David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors, and Dennis Herrera, the city attorney, who were both involved in the negotiations.

Adachi, who some have speculated may be considering a mayoral run, remains, notably, on the outside.

“This is still a labor town,” said Jim Ross, a political consultant. “The labor-backed measure, even if it’s not as good, is going to be more politically salable than Adachi’s measure that is maybe a little bit better. Adachi is pushed even further outside the mainstream thinking.”

The united front that the Lee administration appeared to have assembled for the Tuesday news event was impressive.