City's pension fund payment to be revealed Fri.

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 15, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

Tomorrow the city of San Diego will find out how much of next year's budget will have to go to the employee pension fund. The amount threatens to cripple city services. KPBS reporter Alison St John h

Tomorrow the city of San Diego will find out how much of next year's budget will have to go to the employee pension fund. The amount threatens to cripple city services. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The mayor will present his proposed budget next month, and it is bound to include painful cuts. But city leaders aren't saying just how deep cuts to city services will be until they find out what they have to pay into the pension fund.
The pension board's new independent legal counsel, Harvey Leiderman, says this year the number will not be modified to make things easier for the city. Leiderman: "The actuary will tell us all how much money is going to be needed to come into the system to fund it properly and it's not going to be based on any political pressures." The pension board has hired a new actuary to replace the company that advised them in 2002. That's when alleged conflict of interest led to under funding the plan in return for increasing benefits.
This year's payment to help reduce the massive deficit could be as much as one third of the city's budget. Alison St John, KPBS news.

Alison St John

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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.