ballot propositions

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The Anti-Pension Initiative: What Can UC Do?

Byuclafaculty

The State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee carries a piece on what the political campaign against the anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative will likely look like.  Excerpt: Chuck Reed’s public-employee pension initiative is a long way from making it to a statewide vote – money being the biggest hurdle – but labor unions have already started blasting the proposal. The San Jose mayor’s measure would, among other things, change the California Constitution to explicitly allow state and local governments in a fiscal emergency to cut future retirement costs by lowering current employees’ benefits prospectively but leave accrued benefits untouched. Right…

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More on the pension initiative “coordination”

Byuclafaculty

Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, founders of Campaigns, Inc. You probably have never heard of the couple above, Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who founded what some regard as the first modern political advertising firm – Campaigns, Inc. – right here in California in the early 1930s.  You may not have heard of the great “EPIC” campaign of 1934 – their first big target.  (They ran the opposition.)  I will leave it to you to read up on the history of all of that which you can find in http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all  However, a key tactic they developed was distributing information favoring…

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Anti-Pension Cabal? Smells that way

Byuclafaculty

We have noted in past posting on the filing of a public pension initiative that there appeared to be a good deal of “coordination” in the effort, including a Stanford-Hoover MOOC (online course) on personal investments that somehow ends with a session on public pensions.  There appeared to be more involved than a few California mayors who are the official face. The fact that UC is swept into the initiative – although it is not a city and has its own set of pension modifications adopted by the Regents in 2010 – seems to be evidence of a larger agenda….

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More Let Me Outta Here Re: Pension Initiative

Byuclafaculty

I want out! Yours truly has been posting about the recently filed public pension (and retiree health care) initiative which covers UC.  UC needs a strategy including first attempting to see if the sponsors will amend it or file a revised version that omits UC.  This is a political battle it would be best to avoid if possible. The initiative has the potential to become a “symbol” of intergenerational conflict as a recent article in calpensions.com points out.  Once things become symbols of something that goes beyond the issue at end – think “ObamaCare” – the pros and cons get…

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Pension Initiative Backstop

Byuclafaculty

We have been covering the pension initiative that has now been filed with the state and, in an earlier post, discussed some key elements of the initiative (including the coverage of UC).  An interesting element in the initiative is a provision that provides for defense in court of the initiative by private parties.  It is quite likely that if the initiative passed, it would be challenged in court.  And the attorney general might well refuse to defend it, given the politics of the initiative. In the case of Prop 8 – the anti-gay marriage initiative – the attorney general did…

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Affirmative Action Case at Supreme Court

Byuclafaculty

Blog readers will undoubtedly know that the U.S. Supreme Court is looking at the constitutionality of  Michigan ballot proposition that bans affirmative action in, among other things, public university admissions.  The Michigan proposition was a copy of California’s Prop 209.  Were the Michigan proposition voided, the same would likely happen to Prop 209.  Most observers seem to expect the court to uphold the Michigan proposition.  Prop 209 followed the UC Regents’ action banning affirmative action in admissions.  (The Regents later repealed their ban after 209 was enacted on the grounds that it was redundant.) Inside Higher Ed has an article…

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Curtain Lifted on Pension Initiative

Byuclafaculty

Prior posts have alerted readers of this blog to a forthcoming public pension initiative.  The group that has been working on the initiative seems to have money for a campaign.  It takes $1-$2 million for signature gathering firms to get an initiative on the ballot.  If an initiative is controversial, it may take loads more money for TV advertising to mount a campaign. The initiative explicitly covers UC.  It has some ambiguous elements which we hope to unscramble.  Government employers are given the power to modify pensions and retiree health plans going forward for incumbent employees.  Note that the 2010…

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Public Pension Drumbeat Continues. UC Needs to Begin Planning for Staying Out of Planned Initiative

Byuclafaculty

On Saturday, we alerted blog readers to the coordinated campaign to get some kind of public pension “reform” initiative on the California ballot.  At issue on Saturday was a Stanford-Hoover MOOC, ostensibly about retirement investing, but which culminates in a program on public pensions. The pension drumbeat continues, at this point by articles on the issue. For example, a recent op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune goes on about various municipal bankruptcies but contains a suggestion for a constitutional amendment in California.  The legislature is not about to put such an amendment on the ballot so it could only by…

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Orchestration of Public Pension Issue? Issue for UC?

Byuclafaculty

In a prior post, we noted that there appeared to be a campaign underway by various groups to put a public pension initiative on the California ballot.  We noted that there have been such efforts in the past, but the money needed to mount an effective campaign wasn’t forthcoming.  Now, there may be such money.  The problem for UC is that we tend to be swept into such initiatives despite the fact that the Regents adopted their own pension plan changes back in 2010. This time around, there seems to be some coordination and orchestration of the campaign, e.g.: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/30/5782679/capitol-alert-cal-tax-estimates.html…

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Possible Pension Initiative Which Would Include UC

Byuclafaculty

In a move to slash the retirement benefits of public employees in California, a group of mostly conservative policy advocates has been working behind the scenes on a possible 2014 ballot initiative. A copy of the still-secret draft initiative, which could dramatically impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians and send a signal nationwide, has been obtained by Frying Pan News. If enacted, the proposed law would allow the state and local governments to cut back retirement benefits for current employees for the years of work they perform after the changes go into effect. Previous efforts to curb…