Opinion: Don’t count on California’s Democratic leaders to give pension reform a fair chance

To the editor: It is a virtual certainty that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra will continue the tradition of his Democratic Party predecessors by manipulating ballot language to kill any significant public union pension reform. (“The cost of California’s public pensions is rising fast. Solving the problem by ballot measure is a hard road,” April 7)

That tradition is a subtle tactic of union-backed Democratic officials. It also feeds the party’s hubris in this state that one-party rule will never run out of other people’s money to spend.

It will be an amusing albeit painful sight someday to watch that Democratic Party’s special interests cannibalize each other for table scraps while the firemen, policemen, teachers and nurses enjoy their excessive spoils in low-tax states.

Kip Dellinger, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Your article elevates a phony issue about the ballot summary of pension-reform measures as somehow the decisive factor on these efforts.

The attorney general, who writes the summaries, knows that the language must be impartial. If his summary is biased or erroneous, there is a process for judicial review.

When former Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris wrote that a pension-reform measure “eliminates constitutional protections for vested pension and retiree healthcare benefits for current public employees, including teachers, nurses, and peace officers,” she was stating the truth. If these employees are impacted, shouldn’t the public know?

The voting public needs to understand this because it will impact their health, safety and services when recruitment falls off and public servants go elsewhere.

Michael H. Miller, Los Angeles

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To the editor: As a former labor lawyer, I understand that unions did their job in negotiating extraordinarily generous pension benefits for the employees they represented. And I don’t blame unions for state and local officials who likely didn’t even understand the lunacy of these benefit amounts or else, even worse, chose to kick the can down the road.

But to attempt to prevent reform by referring not to pension benefits already earned, but to the formula that would perpetuate the continued earning of benefits at these same rates in the future as “vested,” is legally wrong and intellectually dishonest. In benefits law, vested means already earned, nothing more.

It’s especially disappointing when this linguistic lie is told by Democrats, the party that is supposed to care about regular people. After all, the money that goes to perpetuating these benefits isn’t available for schools, healthcare, child care and other social programs that people need.

Michael Weinbaum, San Clemente

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