Yesterday in Los Angeles at an event with famed philanthropist and felon Michael Milken, Governor Jerry Brown said that he would soon be releasing details of his own pension reform plan, adding that his proposal will include a constitutional amendment and by necessity be put in front of the voters for approval.  This comes on the same day that legislative leaders announce the formation of a special committee to review the issue of reforms to the public employee pension system.  It is worth noting that the six-member legislative committee that has now been magically formed is stacked with four pro-union votes, thus guaranteeing that no policy recommendations will come from the committee that are not signed off on by the bosses at California Teachers Association, the Service Employees International Union, et.al.

If it is Governor Brown’s intention to qualify his pension reform measure via voter signatures using the initiative process, he’d best hop on that right away.  The clock is ticking on the window to submit language, obtain title and summary, and collect the million or so needed signatures.  I ask this question in all seriousness because if Brown is simply going work with his union allies and their vassals in the legislature on an “all Democrat” solution that doesn’t meaningfully address problems with public employee pensions in this state, and just seeks to give voters an “outlet” to get pension reform out of their system – go for it.  I predict the voters will see through that in a heartbeat.

If the Governor is looking to work with the legislature to place a pension reform constitutional amendment before voters with a two-thirds vote of the legislature, then that means that Brown is looking for a bipartisan solution to this problem.  I guess this begs the question of what is going to be different in 2012 than in 2011?  After all, assuming that he tried to do so, Brown was unable to get the unions (and by extension President Pro-Tem Steinberg and Speaker Perez) to agree to any meaningful, impactful reforms.  And that was in an environment when the unions had the additional carrot of potentially getting the votes of some misguided Republican legislators to put massive tax increases on the ballot.  In my recent conversations with Republican legislators, I have found that their resolve and solidarity on enacting meaningful public employee pension reform is equally as strong, if not stronger, than their commitment to protect Californians from increases in taxes.

I am sure that Governor Brown recalls all too well the Republican list of significant items that would need to be part of any public employee pension reform plan.  I say this with optimism because it simply would not make sense for Brown to introduce a bipartisan plan that didn’t include items such as those offered up by the GOP “Rogue 5” in the Senate.  Their list included major points such as::

Multiple Tiers – New employees would come in with a hybrid pension plan that reduces the benefits, has 50-50 sharing of costs between employers and employees, and seeks to create a plan that is more in line with the private sector.

Pension Cap — Cap the amount of pay pensionable for employees

Reduced Benefits For Current Employees – Allowing for a reduction in benefits for remaining service years of current employees.

Base Pay Only — “Final compensation” must mean the normal rate of pay or base pay of an employee and excludes special compensation, overtime, and accrued leave from retirement calculation.

The “Rogue 5” had many more points, which you can read here.

I should make it clear, I would be dismayed and disheartened if we return back to a dysfunctional model of a rogue group of GOP legislators negotiating directly with the Democrats.  Politics is a team sport and it should be the elected leaders of Republicans that are empowered to negotiate such things – but I digress…

The point of this column is that Republicans are clearly ready to participate in real and meaningful public employee pension reform.  This was clearly demonstrated earlier this year.  But it is doubtful in my mind that the state’s public employee union bosses are willing to “pay the price” of bipartisan cooperation towards this end.  In which case Brown should simply come to terms with the CTA, SEIU, AFL-CIO and the rest and go gather signatures for faux reform.  They can probably get a good deal on signature pricing since they can overlap that effort with signature gathering for their initiative to hike the so-called “millionaires tax” even higher.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Blog Posts.