\”Pensions Beyond Our Ability to Pay\”

Freakish Frisco by Pete Peterson, City Journal 4 May 2010

San Francisco, a city accustomed to earthquakes, has recently been experiencing political tremors that may wind up reshaping its landscape. They started in January, when Willie Brown—the city’s former mayor, longtime speaker of the State Assembly, and now Democratic éminence grise—penned a startling mea culpa in the San Francisco Chronicle. \”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,\” Brown wrote. \”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.\” Brown’s essay was immediately picked up by Republican state legislators and conservative talk-radio hosts, who held it aloft, in an unusual demonstration of bipartisanship, to illustrate the causes of the state’s fiscal crisis.

Brown may have had in mind a 2009 report by the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, which is charged by the San Francisco Superior Court with investigating local government. \”Pensions Beyond Our Ability to Pay\” disclosed that, for the 2011–12 fiscal year, the city would have to increase its contributions to its employees’ pensions by over 50 percent.

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