Courtesy photo

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi

A nasty and very personal battle is brewing over a controversial pension-reform proposal San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi has pushed onto the November ballot.

Bob Muscat, chairman of the Public Employee Committee, spoke late Tuesday afternoon with the leaders of all the city's major public-employee unions at his back. Muscat said that San Francisco voters would reject Adachi's measure — which requires greatly increased employee contributions to the pension fund and for health-care costs — once they understood "what is behind it, who is behind it."

The chief target of Muscat's wrath is San Francisco resident Michael Moritz, who is with Sequoia Capital, a leading venture-capital firm. Muscat repeatedly referred to Moritz (who, with his wife, Harriet Heyman, contributed $245,000 to Adachi's initiative) as a "billionaire" acting in concert with two other notable Adachi backers as "cronies" and a "farm team" for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has made pension reform at the state level a key issue.

Muscat also identified by name two San Francisco residents who had donated to Adachi's initiative. Ron Conway is a well-known angel investor, and David Crane is Schwarzenegger's special advisor for economic issues.

"It's absurd [to think] that Michael Moritz actually cares about working people in San Francisco," Muscat said. "It's simply unbelievable. Moritz is a billionaire who knows nothing about the pension plan." The union group also distributed a document highlighting federal contracts that had been awarded to Sequoia portfolio companies. Crane, Conway and Moritz were not available for comment Tuesday, and neither was Adachi.

In a comment emailed to The Bay Citizen and the Bay Area section of The New York Times for a story published Saturday, Moritz gave his rationale for supporting Adachi's plan: “Wages, benefits and pensions for city employees far outstrip the protections afforded to hundreds of thousands of hard-working San Franciscans. San Francisco’s self-employed, restaurant workers, janitors, carpenters, small merchants, house cleaners and freelancers who work every bit as hard as city employees but do not enjoy similar pension or health care benefits now face the further indignity of watching vital civic services get axed in order to meet these obligations. It’s not right, fair or reasonable.”

Muscat also pilloried Adachi, saying that his pension-reform measure would devastate the finances of city employees, especially those with dependents for whom employee contributions for health-care expenses would rise. He also said that, as an elected official, Adachi would not himself be required to contribute to the pension fund under the pension-reform measure. However, in an interview with The Bay Citizen last week, Adachi said that he would be required to contribute 9 percent of his paycheck if his measure is adopted.

Also targeted by the union representatives Tuesday was Craig Weber, a certified public accountant who served on the civil grand jury that investigated the pension-fund issue and published a report in June. Weber acts as treasurer for Adachi's effort.

Muscat called this an "inappropriate relationship" that perhaps undercuts the findings of the civil grand jury, which forecast ballooning pension obligations for the city if current conditions remain unchanged.

City Attorney Dennis J. Herrera wrote a letter on June 14 to Superior Court Judge James McBride, who presides over the grand jury, about Weber. "I have serious concerns in this particular instance that Mr. Weber's dual roles create a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest, which could undermine the integrity of any Civil Grand Jury investigation into these issues," Herrera wrote.

In his letter, Herrera noted that Weber had contacted Herrera's office in March to ask if his pre-existing and ongoing service on the grand jury would "preclude him from becoming a proponent of an initiative relating to the Retirement System." Weber was told that no law forbade such a dual role, but that he would need to keep the activities separate.

The Herrera letter suggests that the city attorney's office met at least once in the midst of the civil grand jury proceedings with the presiding judge to discuss possible conflict-of-interest issues. "You informed my Office that you were not convinced that Mr. Weber's involvement presented a conflict of interest," Herrera wrote to Judge McBride. 

Weber, a 59-year-old accountant from the Mission, has served on the civil grand jury (an unpaid, volunteer position) for two years and says he has earned a hard education in the ways of San Francisco city politics. He says that he is not a political person, that he obtained clearance from the city attorney's office before taking a role in Adachi's effort. He says that Herrera has attacked him because his work on the civil grand jury focused, in part, on what he says is the city attorney's failure to enforce elements of the city charter as they apply to the city's pension fund.

"It was devastating, absolutely devastating" to be attacked by Herrera, Weber said in an interview Tuesday evening. "I never expected it would end in this way, with the city attorney making allegations about my motives."

"I’m one of thousands of disenfranchised San Franciscans who feel our voices have not been heard by public officals," Weber continues. "I'm not a moderate. I'm not a conservative, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm just a very concerned San Franciscan, like the 75,000 San Franciscans who signed [Adachi's initiative to place it on the November ballot] and who feel totally disenfranchised."