On Tuesday, April 8th, the San Jose City Council approved an ordinance to provide for the hiring cops or firefighters who are denied disability pensions under Measure B. The discussion of the item provided a rare event – 3 Galactic Whoppers and 1 Mega-Whopper at a single meeting.
First, some background information regarding the Measure B approach to Disability Pensions may be helpful. Consider the case of a police officer who is shot in the line of duty and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Under Measure B, that cop would be denied a disability pension as long as there was any job in his department that he could still do. Measure B has no language to protect the officer from a severe loss of pay if the new job requires few skills. Moreover, if the city has jobs the paralyzed cop could do but has no vacancies when he or she applies, Measure B requires that the disability pension must be denied.
Leading the launch of Galactic Whoppers was Councilmember Pete Constant. He began with the claim that – despite the results – the intent of Measure B was to provide that every severely disabled cop or firefighter would be provided for. But if that was the intent, why draft language for the City Charter that does the exact opposite? Moreover, if that was the intent, the proponents of Measure B would have honestly and accurately described what Measure B did. Since I debated Pete Constant twice during the Measure B campaign, and twice used the example of the paralyzed police officer described above, I can personally attest to the fact that he told his audience that the paralyzed officer would get a disability pension – a complete falsehood.
But Constant wasn’t finished. Later in the meeting he denounced a letter from the POA and Firefighters 230 which stated that Measure B would deny disability pensions to their disabled members. That’s a lie, Pete proclaimed. Measure B doesn’t eliminate disability pensions, he asserted. It just changes the definition of disability. In other words, the paralyzed cop case isn’t an example of Measure B denying a disability pension to a disabled officer; he isn’t actually disabled because the only people who are disabled are those who meet the definition of disability under Measure B. This Whopper would have made George Orwell nod that doublespeak is alive and well
Next comes Councilmember Sam Licardo. He repeatedly emphasized that the ordinance under consideration would assure disabled personnel of a city job. Who could quarrel with that? The problem, of course, is that the assurances are paper thin. An ordinance can be changed on two Tuesdays (two readings). Councilmember Herrera specifically asked the City attorney if the ordinance provided any vested rights (that is, real guarantees); the answer was a confident “no.” Also, the newly hired disabled person would be subject to all Civil Service Rules including those relating to layoffs and bumping. If another recession hits, the disabled cop or firefighter may well be recalling Sam’s assurances while waiting on the unemployment line. Finally, it is noteworthy that Licardo and his allies did not consider city ordinances to be adequate to provide assurances when cuts in employee benefits were desired; those required the certainty of a charter amendment. That same level of assurance is what Mr. Licardo has chosen to deny disabled cops and firefighters.
Not to be outdone in race to produce a Whopper, Mayor Chuck Reed responded negatively to Councilmember Rocha’s memo urging amendments to Measure B. The Mayor showed a chart to the audience indicating the large budget shortfalls in the past and relative fiscal stability in the future. Rocha’s proposal had to be opposed, the Mayor insisted, to avoid losing the savings from Measure B and returning to the era of shortfalls. But Rocha’s memo did not alter the sections of Measure B that are generating the major budget savings – the elimination of bonus checks to retirees and the cuts in retiree health costs. It is true that Rocha’s recommendation would lead to higher costs in pensions for new hires, but the current savings from that category are less than $5 million. Even if those costs went up 25%, that’s about $1,300,000 – hardly a budget busting number and well below the average city excess fund balance.
Last but not least is a gratuitous Mega-Whopper from Councilman Khamis. He lamented the challenges associated with having to deal with “uncooperative” city unions. After pay and benefits have been slashed, after 3 anti-union ballot measures have been adopted, after years of an almost total city unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, Khamis baldly argues it is the city unions who are being uncooperative. Presumably that’s the way Vladimir Putin describes the Ukrainians, and with a similar amount of justification.
Bob Brownstein is Director of Policy and Research for Working Partnerships USA.
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