San Jose Measure B dump worries San Diego
San Diego leaders are worried that if San Jose successfully dumps its voter-approved pension reform measure, their city might be next.
Voters in both cities in 2012 overwhelmingly approved landmark laws to trim city retirement benefits that were eating up their budgets. But only San Jose is asking a judge to repeal the measure four years later.
Following numerous lawsuits from employee unions, Mayor Sam Liccardo, a former backer of San Jose’s Measure B, led Constant the effort to replace it with a settlement approved by unions.
But one of Liccardo’s former allies, former Councilman
Pete Constant, along with the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, filed legal papers to stop the city from “undoing the voters’ will.” And now San Diego is joining in that fight by filing an amicus brief, which allows the city to participate in the argument of the case even though it’s not a litigant.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Beth
McGowen in April approved the city’s request to overturn Measure B on a “procedural defect.” Constant and his group appealed, winning a temporary stay in the case last month. San Diego’s city attorney,
Jan Goldsmith, voiced support for the stay in a 10-page letter — undoubtedly an attempt to protect his city’s Prop B pension reform measure from suffering the same fate.
“If the Stay Order were vacated, the invalidation of a voter approved initiative through a negotiated settlement, without a confirming vote of the people, would become an extremely troubling precedent for the City of San Diego,” Goldsmith wrote.