I’m in receipt of the 63 pg PERB decision of 2/11/13, but I haven’t had a chance to go over it with a fined-toothed comb.

But I will. This is my field of expertise.

Essentially, City put Prop B on the ballot without meeting and conferring with its unions first which is a violation of the MMBA (Cal. Gov Code sec 3500 et seq).

http://www.dcaasandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/PERB-Decision.pdf

Essentially, this Decision and the certain litigation stemming from it will have the effect of holding Prop B in abeyance. And it has a better chance of striking it down through the courts than not.

Due to unlawfully jumping the gun, City has an arduous uphill climb in this case, IMO.

The employees City has hired since Prop B took effect (1/1/13?) may very well retroactively get DB plans after the “fat lady” finally sings her encores in this case.

City had until yesterday (3/1) to file objections to PERB’s Statement of Decision and request an oral argument of their objections to PERB.

Your “Cal Watchdog” commentator essentially claimed PERB is in the unions’ pockets. Nothing could be further from the truth. In disciplinary cases, PERB usually sides with the employer. PERB is simply following the law here. City of SD didn’t. It’s as simple as that.

Perhaps if the City hadn’t taken a “wild west” approach in putting poorly worded and too-far-reaching Prop B on the ballot without first meeting and conferring with its unions, they wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Now they’re no doubt wasting a whole team of attorneys at the City Attorney’s Office to fight the decision that they actually fought to get before themselves, lol.

Love it.

That’s your SD tax dollars at work, folks. In SD, politics ALWAYS wins out over potholes.

What I don’t understand is why City Attorney Jan Goldsmith didn’t advise those within the City supporting the Prop B pension reform initiative that they were going about it improperly and thus would never stick.

He’s smarter than this. Maybe he just figured he couldn’t change some of the mindsets of the council, mayor and city administration so they would just have to end up “learning the hard way.” After all, he and the attorneys in his office (one of the four “charging parties” in this case, lol) work 8 am to 5 pm regardless if they have six cases each or 60 cases each!

I noticed Goldsmith is not promising any particular outcome on the Cal Watchdog video.

Carry on, City. This “oral argument,” IF it happens, might be just juicy enough for me to trek on up to Oakland to watch it. WTH, I could take some city attorney employee friends along and visit some old haunts while we’re up there :=]

paramount, I’m not quite sure what your “Cal Watchdog” video was intended to accomplish.

Good stuff, as always, BG.

Once again, the “privatization movement” folks are trying to fool the uninformed about how pension costs have “spiked” in recent years. They always use the peak years of the stock market bubble (~1999-2001) as the base line — a period of time when pension funds were super-funded (over-funded) and many public employers were paying little to NOTHING toward pension costs because the investment returns were contributing so much to the funds. While it’s true that contribution rates and amounts have increased over time, it’s nowhere near as dramatic as they try to make it seem when using “pension holiday” periods as a starting point.

———-

When former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger briefly backed a proposal to switch new state and local government hires to 401(k)-style plans, he cited soaring state worker pension costs.

This time, employers had not been given a contribution “holiday.” State workers aided by agreeing to increase their pension contributions, though Schwarzenegger had to hold up the budget for 100 days to get a boost from 5 percent of pay to 8 percent for most.

CalPERS projects $200 million state rate hike
—————–

When looking at historical trends for pension contribution rates, current rates are generally in line with historical norms:

http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/employer/actuarial-gasb/30-year-rate-hist.pdf

————————

For the record, I have been opposed to both the pension boost and contribution “holidays” from day one, and can list at least four different pension programs (all still defined benefit, which I think is important) that would *legally* and ethically reduce pension costs in very dramatic ways.

What these comments ignor is that the will of San Diego voters has been thwarted. We took a long look at public sector pensions and the ominous trends for taxpayers and voted to rein in the excesses. Because of a technicality, the voters’ choice will now be delayed, or perhaps denied, depending on what the courts decide.
In presenting the mountain of data above, CA Renter criticizes taxpayer advocates for cherry-picking dates to make the pensions’ rate of return look bad, such as the 2000 – present ROR. He is correct that that is not a fair benchmark, since the Dow Jones Average is up only about 20% from that dot-com bubble year. But neither is it fair to pick the near doubling of the DJA from four years ago–an anomally that will not likely continue.
Along those lines, public sector unions usually pick the past 30 years of market performance to judge their expected future rates of return in their portfolio. But the Dow was at 800 in 1982 and is 14,000 now. As a result, they appear reasonable when projecting a 7.75% rate into the future. This keeps their members’ contribution share artifically low as well as that of current taxpayers, hiding the exploding future liability of taxpayers. This keeps current politicians happy, as they kick the can down the road.
But in the new normal of our economy, 7.75% is illusory and dishonest. No one should reasonable expect that now. Companies are rapidly revising downward their expected ROR’s and responsibly setting aside money to cover their future obligations. The public sector needs to face reality as well.
Private sector taxpayers work well into their sixties before they can retire and get a far smaller pension or social security check than the unionized public sector workers who tend to retire in their fifties. That’s why San Diego voters voted as they did.

Here is the link I discussed in my last post of yesterday but forgot to put in.

http://fox5sandiego.com/2013/02/13/city-to-appeal-ruling-against-pension-initiative/

I was able to do a little more research this morning and came up with DCAA’s explanation of my rather “disjointed” post of what happened leading up to the ill-fated Prop B election. This explains the history better than I ever could (since they were THERE) and also in a layperson’s terms:

Closed Litigation

City should be worried about a “McCarthy-era trial” before PERB, lol. They put themselves in that position. I don’t understand how Sanders, acting as Mayor of SD and “private citizen” simultaneously during the gathering of support for Prop B and also in the “back room” (with City’s shills, of course, and no doubt using his staff for the supervising and verifications of the gathering of signatures), was able to “stick to his story” with a straight face in the PERB v. City case and claim he was a acting ONLY as a “private citizen,” lol.

Sanders would be just one of several witnesses called in the event of a trial in this case. I can name off a few more at the top of my head, but I’ll just leave it to the Piggs to figure out who :=]

Although it could become quite ugly, it would be a trial worth watching, that is, IF it happens and you could get a seat in there!

Unfortunately, for City, all their “sheet-rolling-partner” witnesses waiting in the hallway to be called to testify would likely be supervised by a deputy out there. And they won’t be able to listen the testimony of their brethren inside in order to preplan how to testify. It will be every man/woman for themselves, as it was in the criminal prosecutions of the SDCERS pension board a decade-plus back.

Here are some more recent links of commentary on the recent PERB decision:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/12/sd-pension-ruling-perb/?print&page=all

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/government/article_aa3fe0f0-764e-11e2-85f3-001a4bcf887a.html

http://www.10news.com/news/city-attorney-pension-ruling-places-obstacles-on-initiatives

This one is an excellent local Op-Ed piece by longtime attorney for the MEA, Ann Smith, who hails from THE top labor law firm in SD, IMO. I couldn’t have said it any better myself:

….If the PERB board upholds the [administrative law judge’s] decision, the same appellate court will decide whether to grant any petition for review because the city has no automatic right of appeal. If review takes place, the court will defer to the findings of fact the administrative law judge already made based on the overwhelming evidence about the city’s role in Prop. B as employer…

(emphasis added)

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/27/perb-prop-b-san-diego/

Here is a very informative analysis of the recent Proposed PERB Decision, written by a CA firm representing public entities, aptly describing how the ALJ came to his conclusion.

. . . Analysis
As discussed above, the ALJ was asked to determine if the City, through its agents including Mayor Sanders, violated the MMBA by failing to meet and confer with the unions about the pension reform ballot initiative. The ALJ noted that the third scenario outlined by City Attorney Aguirre, as discussed above, was directly applicable in this case. The unions argued that Mayor Sanders developed and promoted a campaign that was designed to avoid the City’s obligation to meet and confer. Further, the unions contended that the City could not avoid its duty to meet and confer on the basis that the Mayor acted as a private citizen, because the City is liable for the acts of the Mayor through the law of agency. In response, the City argued that the Mayor was acting as a private citizen and he was lawfully entitled to pursue the citizen’s initiative strategy. Therefore, according to the City, it was not required to meet and confer.

The ALJ first analyzed whether a unilateral change in the terms of employment had occurred. He concluded that a unilateral change occurred because the Mayor acted on his intention to pursue pension reform, satisfying the requirement for taking concrete steps towards implementation of a new policy.

Next, the ALJ analyzed whether the City had a duty to meet and confer because of the Mayor’s sponsorship of the ballot initiative. First, the ALJ determined that by virtue of the MMBA the City and its representatives are required to meet and confer with unions. The ALJ concluded that the Mayor is unquestionably such a representative because he acts as the City’s chief negotiator. Moreover, based on the legal principle of agency liability, the Mayor was acting with actual and apparent authority on behalf of the City. In reaching this conclusion, the ALJ determined that the Mayor was acting within the scope of his employment with the goal of improving the City’s financial health and the City Council ratified the Mayor’s actions by consenting to the initiative and placing it on the ballot. In addition, the ALJ made a finding of apparent authority based on the Mayor’s numerous public pronouncements in support of the ballot initiative, and also found ratification because of the City’s failure to repudiate the Mayor’s actions.

Significance
. . . “As the case is litigated, it will present fascinating and novel issues arising out of the tension between the duty to bargain and the constitutional initiative process.”

http://www.aalrr.com/files/ESPG_ALERT_-_Feb_21_2013_PERB_Judge_Concludes_that_the_City_of_San_Diego_was_Legally_Obligated_to_Bargain_with_Its_Employee_Unions.pdf

The entitlement culture of Big, BIG Development is unreal. In the case of Mr Williams of the Lincoln Club and his brethren, acting as occasional “strawpersons” for the Mayor and select councilmembers is a VERY small price to pay to all their “entitlements,” IMHO.

[quote=paramount]The entitlement culture of public employee unions and their members is absolutely unreal.[/quote]

Again, paramount, you’re taking your frustration out on the wrong people. I’ll make the same offer to you that I did to pri_dk/Harvey and NSR while back.

http://piggington.com/otcontest_to_guess_the_occupant_of_beautiful_new_building_in_rsf#comment-205009

http://piggington.com/surreal_state_of_the_state_speech#comment-177669

or: http://piggington.com/surreal_state_of_the_state_speech?page=2

http://piggington.com/more_public_pension_loony_tunes_now_providence_ri_is_in_trouble#comment-209643

. . . ad nauseam.

To help you get started, paramount, I’ll loan you my crank pencil sharpener. You’ll just have to mount it on the wall in a convenient place cuz you’ll be using it a lot 🙂