Video Transcript:

GLORIA PENNER (Host):  Well this week San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith revived the debate over the controversial DROP program, which pays retirement benefits to some city workers while they're still working.  We put Mr. Goldsmith on the record and asked him why he believes the city can legally drop the DROP program.

JAN GOLDSMITH (San Diego City Attorney): I'm very confident that we are correct in our interpretation of it, it's the clear wording of our charter.  It says it requires a majority vote of the members of the retirement system and they did not get that.  The ordinance itself was conditioned upon not only that vote, but also certification that the members had approved it, and that certification or notification never was received.  Now, whether somebody disagrees, I don't take it personal, again I'm not on a crusade, I can only give my best opinion and it is what it is. We vetted it, and we'll see what SDCERS and the judge does and I respect their views.  It's not personal, we want to get it right. If they see something we didn't, I'm okay with that. This isn't a battle, this is getting it right on law, and the city is much better served if we focus on that than to make these into huge battles and political fronts.

PENNER: So the union representing 2,000 blue collar city employees says Goldsmith got it wrong.  Here is the president of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 127.

JOAN RAYMOND (AFSCME Local 127): But the city attorney is saying that you need to count all the folks that didn't vote too, and that's why there wasn't a majority vote, which totally flies in the face of what we know in this country as a majority vote.  And also, the program has been going for 12 years, it's a bonafide program, no one has ever questioned this before, and so now it appears that the opinion is that this program didn't really exist.  That's ridiculous.

PENNER:  So JW there are people at home who are going to say that Joan Raymond's argument makes sense, does it?

JW AUGUST (10News, Managing Editor):  I don't think so.  I went through the docs of this and I found the smoking gun.  It's a memo signed by Lee Grisham attesting to the ballot that they took that they're questioning and at the bottom it says the total ballots cast 32-69.

PENNER:  That's 3,269. 

AUGUST: 3,269 and at that time there was over 9,000 members in the union.  So apparently this never went to the city clerk either.  There was a procedural problem and the claim by the city attorney is this is not enough to validate it.

PENNER:  But that's interesting because it appears to me Ricky that Goldsmith is backing off, I mean JW says here's evidence that maybe he's right, but he seems to be backing off saying "It's up to the retirement system to make the decision on DROP."

RICKY YOUNG (San Diego Union-Tribune, Government Editor):  The temptation initially was to say this it's very much like his predecessor Mike Agguire to come up with a legal opinion that says "This program was never valid in the first place," and to attack it on those grounds. He has very narrowly tried to say this is not about the program as a whole this is just about whether we need to have a vote to change the program.  What's interesting is his memo had a mistake in it that he characterized as a "typo" which is actually a missing word and the question is does it require a majority of the members of the retirement system to approve it or a majority vote, and his opinion left out the word "vote" so a majority vote is different from being approved by a majority of the members.

PENNER:  So this is down to whether it's a word or or not a word, parsing the word kind of thing, but-

YOUNG:  That's what these lawyers do.

PENNER:  But the fascinating part is that Goldsmith is now saying he doesn't want to make this into a huge battle, he doesn't want to fight it on a political front, but is it too late for that?

AUGUST:  I think he's doing a good job of doing the Teddy Roosevelt thing he's speaking softly but he carries a very large stick.

PENNER:  Okay, and where do you think it's all gonna go where is it eventually going to be decided?

YOUNG:  It will end up where lawyers always end up, in court, and that's what Goldsmith has been saying to some of his criticism is "Well, you may or may not like my memo, but the judge will decide."

PENNER:  But the worst part is, here is the city complaining about all the money that it has to give back maybe to the state to cut, and this has to be costing the city bunches of bucks.

AUGUST:  I heard that when the City Council found out about this they were high fiving in the back chambers because they were excited, this gets them off the hook, maybe.

PENNER: Okay well thank you very much, let's move on.