Mayor outlines plan to pay down pension deficit

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 30, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders wants to leverage millions of dollars in tobacco money to help pay down the city's billion dollar pension deficit. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The latest idea to borrow money involves using tobacco settlement dollars, a relatively secure source of financing, as collateral to sell bonds. Mayor Sanders hopes the plan will reduce the pension deficit fast.

Sanders: "We believe that leveraging the $10.3 million in tobacco revenue will allow us to obtain approximately $100 million. This is $100 million our city would then contribute towards our pension obligation."

Become a KPBS sponsor

Using tobacco settlement money allows the city to sell bonds even before audits for the last three years are approved.

The mayor says programs currently funded with tobacco money won't lose their funding. The tobacco money will secure the loan but the loan will actually be paid off by extra money the city employees recently pledged to contribute to their pension plans. Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

twitter

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.