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Pension News
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Chiefs join ranks of pension fight
Sacramento Bee
By Andy Furillo -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, March 24, 2005
Police and fire brass align with unions to battle the governor's proposed changes.
California's top police and fire department management groups have formed an unusual alliance with organized labor in opposing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to overhaul the state's public employee pension system.
The California Police Chiefs Association, the California Fire Chiefs Association and the California State Sheriffs' Association all say that the governor's proposed ballot initiative to convert the pension system to a 401(k)-style plan would imperil their ability to put the best people on the front lines in the fight for public safety.
"It's our profound belief that this initiative is bad for California's public safety," said Bill Brown, chief of the Lompoc Police Department in Santa Barbara County and president of the state police chiefs' association, whose members provide 70 percent of all the policing services in the state.
"We believe it will hinder our ability to recruit and retain the best in law enforcement," he said. "We believe that anything that puts the retirement question in potential jeopardy is a bad thing. Ultimately, it's bad for police officers, and it's bad for all Californians."
A spokesman for Citizens to Save California, a campaign committee with close ties to Schwarzenegger that is paying for the signature-gathering effort to put the pension initiative on the ballot, suggested that the public safety management groups represent another "special interest" that the Republican governor is taking on in Sacramento to fundamentally alter state government's way of doing business.
"The people of California sent the governor here to make these changes and these reforms to the system," said Reed Dickens of CSC. "One is that the state can't spend more than it takes in, and one reason it does is because of the lavish retirement plans that were brought about when (former) Gov. (Gray) Davis and the state Legislature cut deals with the special-interest groups."
Asked if the police and management organizations represents "special interests," Dickens said: "We appreciate the jobs they're doing. But the committee believes the pension system needs a major overhaul, and the governor was sent here by the people to do that."
Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman, Margita Thompson, said the administration hopes that management groups "would be putting just as much pressure on the Legislature" as on the governor "to provide a counterproposal and to provide their own ideas as well" to check a pension program that cost government agencies billions of dollars in the past half-decade.
Meanwhile, the public safety labor unions, which have clashed heatedly at times with their bosses over discipline, staffing, assignment and other issues, welcomed the managers in the fight against the pension changes.
"We're very appreciative," said Dave Topaz, president of the Sacramento Police Officers Association. "The management groups understand they wouldn't be able to fill the positions they're supposed to without decent benefits."
The initiative supported by Schwarzenegger and CSC would force state and local agencies to convert defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution systems and apply them to all employees hired after July 1, 2007. It would limit agencies' contributions to the plans and require employees in some circumstances to increase their share of financing their retirement pay.
In a controversial summary of the initiative, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the measure would eliminate death and disability benefits - a component that has sparked outrage by police and fire labor unions. Proponents of the initiative say a form of the benefits easily could be reinstated in whatever pension system replaces the current one.
Position papers released by the police and fire chiefs list several areas of concern. Chief among them is the fear that the proposal would hurt recruitment and retention, with agencies from other states sweeping into California and picking off cops and firefighters trained here but ready to pack their portable pensions and move to lower-cost states.
A shift away from the most common public safety pension benefit - 3 percent of the highest salary for each year of service at age 50 - also figures to result in an exceptionally older workforce, the chiefs and sheriffs say. Instead of retiring in their 50s, public safety workers would be compelled by their reliance on their paychecks to keep working - putting them at greater risk of injury and increasing their agencies' liability, the managers say.
The managers also say they would be forced to promote less-qualified candidates from within their own ranks to upper-level positions rather than relying on outsiders with better credentials who transfer in laterally. Their reason: the disincentive of giving up a more lucrative defined-benefit plan to take a new job with an agency that offers a riskier 401(k) system.
"We perceive this proposal as potentially causing a significant reduction in the number of chief officers who would be willing to lateral to another department and take over as chief," said Corona Fire Department Chief Mike Warren, president of the California Fire Chiefs Association. "Looking at outside agencies as well as within gives those making the decision a broader choice."
The police chiefs are trying to set up a meeting with Schwarzenegger. The sheriffs' group has conducted one face-to-face session with the governor and subsequently met with his chief of staff, Pat Clarey, and finance director, Tom Campbell.
Nick Warner, the sheriffs' lobbyist, said, "We feel we're having productive conversations." A compromise could well be within the works, he said.
"The gap isn't so huge," Warner said. "The key area I see for compromise is where he gets to protect the taxpayers and we get to make sure that these people who put their lives on the line every single day have the benefits they deserve."
A proposed constitutional amendment carried by Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge, that is now pending in the Legislature carries many of the changes the governor is seeking and could be a possible vehicle for compromise, according to Warner and other sources.
Thompson, the governor's spokeswoman, confirmed that the sheriffs' group and members of Schwarzenegger's staff conferred last weekend. The association offered to forward a set of "principles" to the administration, Thompson said, "and we're eager to see them."
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