I've probably written about this before, but in case you missed it, the place without a pension disaster is the City of San Francisco. And the reason it doesn't have a pension disaster is that all pension changes in that city are subject to a public referendum, and have been for 120 years, as descrbed here. So the irrevocable pension heists of the past 12 years didn't occur there, because the sort that occured in New York and many other places could not stand up to public scrutiny. Not when people understand that their taxes would soar and their public services would be devastated as a result, as ours will be. Not when people are allowed to compare the retirement benefits they would possibly be forced to pay for, and the retirement deal public employees are willing to pay for by shopping at the place where they work. They could only go through as unannounced deals in the dark, which is what we have here in New York. I'll bet those New York City public employees who actually live here would be embarassed to confront their neighbors with the consequences of their demand.
A referendum requirement would certainly help in the long run. In the short run, however, there is only one acceptable choice: force public employees to pay for much of the cost of their unions' back door deals and deceptions. Not future public employees. Today's public employees. As I've written, this could certainly be done, but the polticians claim it can't, because the retired and about to be retired are among the small share of the people who actually matter in this state.
The state should set the government contribution for pensions to whatever is fair and reasonable — say eight percent for most workers, 12 percent for those who have to work outside in all weathers, and 15 percent for public saftey workers in the most dangerous occupations. The employee contribution would be the rest. Right now. Doing so would strengthen the pension benefits by guaranteeing ongoing support, rather than reducing or impairing pension benefits, which the constitution forbids. The pension enhancements of the past 12 years were free? Then let the non-existent cost be shared.
If it turned out that the statement of zero cost was a little misleading, perhaps today's public employees would agree to require yestedary's — those perpetrating the heist — to pay for a large share of their health insurance in exchange for higher wages.
And by the way, just because we didn't have any referendums, that doesn't mean we can't have a public airing of all the pension changes of the past 12 years after the fact right now. What were the pension benefits of different types of public employees in 1997? What were all the proposals to change those benefits in the state legislature introduced since 1997, and who introduced them? Which onces came to a vote, and who voted how? Which ones passed, and how has the public cost of pension and retiree health care changed as a result?
People in near-uniformly affluent, politically liberal San Francisco were not willing to vote for these kinds of deals, because according to any political ideology they are simply unjust — more for those who already have more. One could imagine what New Yorkers would have to say were it not for the propaganda machine blaming the “shared sacrifice” for everyone else on “circumstances beyond our control.”