Today marks end of former-Mayor Chuck Reed’s pension reform fiasco. The City of San Jose has now agreed to a settlement of the dispute surrounding Reed’s Measure B with City workers. The agreement covers all but one of the nine non-public safety unions, which represent 3,000 City employees. The terms of the settlement are similar to deal made with the police and fire unions earlier this year. It institutes legal pension reform, restores disability benefits and repeals Measure B altogether.
Today’s agreement ends a three year legal battle against Measure B, which voters approved in 2012, but which the courts found to be illegal. That litigation cost the City millions of dollars and caused the departure of hundreds of police officers, engineers, planners and other skilled workers who provide essential City services.
Did anyone gain from Measure B? No one except politicians like Reed who cynically used the popularity of pension reform for personal political gain. Now that the City has a pension reform agreement with its workforce that could have averted the costs and lost services caused by Reed’s ill-fated pension measure, maybe City residents will see Measure B in a different light.
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