California's Willie Brown on Pension Reform

Willie Brown is a distinguished, career California Democrat.  He was California's longest-serving Assembly Speaker, never to matched due to California's Legislative term limits.  He was also former Mayor of San Francisco.  The California Legislature recently passed a long-overdue pension reform bill that is a small, but necessary, step in the right direction.  Even with the pension reform legislation, California's public pensions are underfunded by tens of billions of dollars.  California taxpayers are on the hook to make up the difference.

Willie Brown has been open and blunt about the Legislature's role in California's poor condition.  Here's his latest his column in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Scroll down as there are multiple topic in his column.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/Eastwood-s-act-caught-GOP-off-guard-3834031.php

"As reforms go, the pension deal that Sacramento lawmakers reached last week is just a start to correct the mistakes that former lawmakers, including me, have made over the years. 

"But for all the talk about how the changes were needed to make the governor's tax plan [Proposition 30] more palatable to voters this fall, the fact is that lawmakers bucked the unions for one reason and one reason only: They want to keep their jobs.

"The unions are really bent out of shape because they weren't allowed in the room during the negotiations, as they usually are. But why should they be in the room?

"The world is changing. Years ago it was the likes of Southern Pacific and other big businesses calling the shots in Sacramento, and we were all highly critical of them.

"These days it's labor. That's not the portrayal union leaders like to see in the media, but it's the truth. 

"Real reform would be barring labor leaders from sitting on state pension boards. The boards ought to be made up of money managers who are concerned with how much cash is going in and out of the fund. There is no justification for any trustee on a pension board being more interested in spreading benefits than paying for them."

See also ...

• BLOG: Even Liberal Democrat Willie Brown Sees the Problem!http://soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2010/03/even-liberal-democrat-willie-brown-sees.html

• San Francisco Chronicle: Jerry Brown won't challenge teachers unionhttp://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/Jerry-Brown-won-t-challenge-teachers-union-2528743.php
  
• Los Angeles Times: California Teachers Assn. a powerful force in Sacramento: The union, backed by an army of 325,000 teachers and a war chest as sizable as those of the major political parties, can make or break all sorts of deals.
  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/18/local/la-me-cta-20120819

Even Liberal Democrat Willie Brown Sees the Problem!

They say that the first road to recovery is to admit that you have a problem. Well, perhaps there is hope for California yet!

Willie Brown, a life-long liberal Democrat, served in the California Assembly for 30 years, was Speaker of the California Assembly for 15 years, and was San Francisco's first African-American mayor. So imagine my surprise to find the following in his "Willie's World" column in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, dated 3-JAN-2010.

Willie's World (3-JAN-2010)
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/03/BA2V1BBGHH.DTL

"If we as a state want to make a New Year's resolution, I suggest taking a good look at the California we have created. From our out-of-sync tax system to our out-of-control civil service, it's time for politicians to begin an honest dialogue about what we've become.

"Take the civil service.

"The system was set up so politicians like me couldn't come in and fire the people (relatives) hired by the guy they beat and replace them with their own friends and relatives.

"Over the years, however, the civil service system has changed from one that protects jobs to one that runs the show.

"The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life.

"But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits to private-sector levels while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers.

"Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most officeholders. But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact that 80 percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.

"Either we do something about it at the ballot box, or a judge will do something about in Bankruptcy Court. And if you think I'm kidding, just look at Vallejo."

One question, Mr. Brown: Why all this honesty now? Why not a decade or two ago so that we could have avoided all this turmoil? I guess better late than never.

See also ...

California Treasurer Lockyer Scolds Fellow Democrats on Unsustainable Pensions and Their Inability to Fix the Problem
http://soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2010/02/california-treasurer-lockyer-scolds.html

Jerry Brown won't challenge teachers union
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/27/BATQ1HU1VQ.DTL