San Jose Mayor needs a math lesson; pension shortfall greatly exaggerated

In his push to attack pension benefits for hard-working San Jose public workers, Mayor Chuck Reed exaggerated the city’s pension costs by one-quarter of a billion dollars. Despite negotiating in good faith to find a solution to the alleged budget crisis, AFSCME had questioned the legitimacy of the Mayor’s numbers. All the while, Reed was using a nonsense figure to push his radical anti-worker agenda, which includes a destructive pension measure on the June 2012 ballot that could savage city workers’ chances for a stable retirement and a unilateral 12 percent paycut for all AFSCME city workers.

Even after Reed had been warned to stop using the inflated figures, he commissioned a study designed to inflate his pension cost projections even further. Reed and members of the city council have misled the public about the cost of public service workers’ pensions, and tried to turn a policy issue into a political football.

As AFSCME members fight the untruths and injustices in San Jose, the proponents of two statewide pension “reform” ballot initiatives have suspended their campaign. This anti-worker group leading the drive was unable to secure the necessary funding to complete a signature drive. Our efforts to educate voters about the facts and the true agenda behind attacks on our hard-earned retirement security are paying off in California.