Countywide : Public Employees Start Ballot Petition

People who work in public schools or who have other government jobs launched a petition drive Friday to put a pension protection initiative on the November ballot.

School employees collected about 100 signatures Friday afternoon in a campaign at the Mall of Orange. The coalition of groups sponsoring the initiative must collect 616,000 signatures before mid-April for their measure to qualify for the November ballot.

The employees are seeking to prohibit the state from diverting pension fund money to finance other state programs or to help close a state budget deficit, said Carolyn Constantino, a member of the California School Employees Assn.

Constantino said public employees were angered last year when Gov. Pete Wilson shifted about $1.6 billion from the $46-billion California Public Employees Retirement System fund to help cover state budget shortfalls. The legality of the shift is a matter now before the state Court of Appeal.

“We figured it is $1,500 per employee,” Constantino said.

The CalPERS fund provides pensions to about 1 million retirees--teachers and other school personnel, firefighters, law enforcement officers and other city, county and state employees.

“We’re just little folks,” said Carol Jones, a secretary for the maintenance department in the Westminster School District, who was manning a table for the Mall of Orange campaign. “And we pay 7% of our paycheck to the retirement fund, so that is our money.”