San Francisco Prop B. Pension and Health Reform
invite response
2010 Oct 26, 7:22am 1,241 views 1 comment
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EBGuy
2010 Oct 26, 9:07am
The Chronicle did an interesting profile of Jeff Adachi, the public defender, who is spearheaded this issue.
"If you're talking about the one problem that threatens core services of government and the quality of life in San Francisco, this is it," he said. "As a public defender, we often have to take unpopular positions. We're representing clients who are unpopular themselves. By definition, our role is to challenge the system."
I was going through the voting material last night, and one particular proposition picqued my interest, and that is San Francisco Prop B, Pension and Health reform. I think this has more than a local impact prospectively.
In a nutshell:
Shall the City increase employee contributions (to 9% and 10% from currently 0% and 7.5%) to the Retirement System for retirement benefits; decrease employer contributions to the Health Service System for health benefits for employees, retirees and their dependents (employee fully covered but dependents 50% covered instead of 75%)?
The proposal applies to all employees, not just new employees so it would affect new employee immediately, especially police officers and firefighter which contribute nothing into their pension.
My position is employees can have whatever pension they want as long as the government picks up a reasonable cost and the employee picks up the rest of it. Same with Health insurance coverage where the government is picking up too much of the cost.
In the end, since government will be operating in an environment of limited resource, I rather it go to summer school program, park and recreation, fix the streets and/or keep the meters from charging close to $15 an hour and fee the residents and visitors to death. Contributions for pension and health is something like $15 out of $100 currently and in five years, it would be $25 out of $100. That $10, or a fair majority portion of it should be appropriated to keep worthy programs running, not keep the pension machine rolling.
#environment