June 6, 2012

Voters in California Back Pension Cuts for City Workers

By IAN LOVETT

LOS ANGELES — As Wisconsin residents voted on Tuesday not to recall Gov. Scott Walker — who has become an enemy of labor unions nationwide — two California cities dealt blows of their own to organized labor.

In San Diego and San Jose, voters overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers.

Around 70 percent of San Jose voters favored the pension measure, while 66 percent of San Diego residents supported a similar measure.

"This is really important to our taxpayers," Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose, said Tuesday night. "We’ll get control over these skyrocketing retirement costs and be able to provide the services they are paying for."

Statewide, voters also remained very closely divided on a $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes, which would be the first increase in the cigarette tax here in 14 years. Proceeds from the tax would not go to state coffers, but would instead finance cancer research.

The tax remained too close to call on Wednesday morning, according to The Associated Press, although opponents of the measure appeared to cling to a razor-thin lead with all precincts reporting.

Antismoking advocates, who promoted the tax as the best way to reduce smoking rates, were outspent nearly four to one. Their opponents, financed largely by the tobacco industry, spent almost $47 million in advertisements to defeat the measure.

Public employee unions, meanwhile, had fought hard against the two pension reform initiatives.

The San Diego Municipal Employees Association brought an unsuccessful legal challenge in an effort to keep the measure off the ballot.

Speaking to KPBS, a local television station, Michael Zucchet, general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Association, said last month that the ballot initiative would not save the city money.

“This initiative doesn’t save anything,” Mr. Zucchet said. “You are basically cutting off your nose to spite your face for pension reform.”

Mr. Zucchet did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday night.

But the mayors of both cities pushed the pension reforms hard, arguing that changes to city worker pensions were essential to keep municipal budgets in the black.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said he hoped the initiatives would provide models for other cities and for the state government, where pension reform efforts have stalled. "The appetite for pension reform in California is huge," Mr. Coupal said.

Tuesday also offered the first widespread test of the state’s new primary system, in which the top two vote-getters move on to a runoff, regardless of party affiliation.

One of the most heavily financed races pit two sitting Democratic representatives, colleagues in the House for 15 years, against each other to represent the San Fernando Valley: Brad Sherman won with 42 percent of the vote, and Howard L. Berman had 32 percent. They will face each other again in the November runoff.