Endorsement: Yes on Measure G

In 2009, pre-dating San Jose’s Measure B pension reforms by a few years, the city began exploring the idea of restructuring its retirement boards.

A report called both the public safety and federated boards ineffective and recommended that the city replace elected union and political appointees with a majority of board members with financial expertise. The city complied, though the change spurred some backlash from unions that wanted to hang on to control.

But the goal was to give the two pension boards greater autonomy. On the ballot this fall, Measure G would enact the final phase of that 2009 report. It will grant full independence to the retirement boards, effectively upgrading them to their own agency with the authority to hire and fire executives, set salaries and make other personnel decisions.

The City Council would still control their budget and appoint board members and the boards would remain beholden to open meeting laws. A “yes” vote would make Retirement Services Director Roberto Peña, who’s in charge of San Jose’s $4.8 billion retirement plans, accountable to the board instead of the city manager.

Vote "yes" on Measure G to strengthen the independence of San Jose’s retirement boards so they can better focus on their financial stewardship.

For official ballot descriptions of local measures, go to the Registrar of Voters website.

4 Comments

  1. You forgot to mention that since those changes were made, the revenues were lower than ever and lower than 99% of other funds nationwide. Your own article and the original story:

    http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2014/03/19/report-lambastes-city-for-poor-investment-performance/

    http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/14/san-jose-pensionreform.html

    Reed and his boys are determined to destroy pension funds by any means necessary… Union busting is a side benefit. Vote NO on everything he and his ilk endorse.

  2. NO! This is another attempt at union-busting in this “Ayn Rand” society! I simply cannot understand why some people vote against theiir own interests…

    • They want to give sole control of a billion dollar+ pension fund over to the City Council ?!?

      When money is placed under the control of politicians, that money evaporates quickly, dissipating into political projects to perpetuate the political interests of those in charge of those assets. However, by having the pension fund under the control of those who have a vested interest in keeping the fund solvent, those Retirement Board members, who are still elected by the pension fund membership, rather than bureaucrats appointed by the City, there is some small protection against those funds being misused or diverted on some sort of “temporary” program (“We’ll pay it back later when things improve”, i.e., never); for there is nothing more permanent than a “temporary” government program.

      Politicians at the national level had access to the Social Security fund and it went bankrupt. When control of any amount of money is given to politicians who are elected by under-informed voters (which our local politicians have traditionally relied on, with considerable success)) such politicians invariably will immediately insulate themselves from any subsequent negative outcome accountability (which our local politicos have also traditionally done, with considerable success) by passing supposed control to unelected, bureaucratic proxies who owe allegiance only to those who appointed them, History has shown that this money will soon evaporate into pet political projects but it is those “greedy public employees” who will be demonized and scapegoated for bankrupting the fund.

      If the City wants a seat at the Retirement Board table, which seems reasonable, this could be done by a vote, not of a ballot measure, but of the retirement system members, but to give control of that much money to a bunch of politicians is folly.

  3. Jack Slade Speaks!

    This is the last roadblock to investing the Pension Funds of the City of San Jose into speculative investing. The new Pension managing system will now go behind very thick doors which will allow strangers to do what they want with $4,000,000,000.00 in free for all money. The master minds, Cortex, have a poor success rate everywhere they have been involved. The good side is that members of SJPD, what’s left of them, will pull up stakes and bolt. This will make citizens safer when they are replaced with Emotionally stable, well trained, supervised and managed people. With Liccardo as Mayor and Measure B and now G the City will dive down into Chapter 9 like Stockton. Buy a gun, buy a generator, buy and fill 30 gas cans , buy a bicycle, subscribe to a Book Club, buy a long Garden Hose and fire extinguishers , order Bottled Water, put in Solar Panels and a TV antennae. Now you have all your City Services re-instated and you have control.

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