Politics

San Diego City Wrestles With Benefit Mistake

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published November 30, 2010 at 3:00 AM PST

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

San Diego City Council must decide how to make up more than $100 million that was underpaid when employees bought benefits in 2003. Either the city or the employees will have to cover the cost, and the IRS is waiting for a decision.

In 2003, the pension system underestimated the cost of allowing employees to purchase years of service, in order to qualify for pensions. A court says the city cannot be expected to pay for the mistake.

But city employee Cindy Morrison told the council that retirees can’t pay either.

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“They’re the ones that are having the sleepless nights, the panic attacks and the failing health," she said. "When they retired, they believed that was it. Nobody had ever heard that you could reopen their contracts."

City attorney Jan Goldsmith said it’s no good solving the pension problems piecemeal, one skirmish at a time.

“There are more of these skirmishes, where more good people are going to lose some sleep,” he said, “and there’s tax payers that are losing sleep too. I know the people of San Diego really want to end these pension wars that seem to go on and on.”

Goldsmith invited city labor groups to send their attorneys to negotiate a global solution to the pension wars.

In the mean time, the council will meet in closed session in January to decide how much the city will pay to cover the 2003 mistake. Even though the courts have ruled in the city’s favor, the threat of lawsuits may make it more cost effective to exempt at least some employees from a settlement.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.