City proposes using tobacco settlement toward pension deficit

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published April 23, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

The City of San Diego is grappling with labor unions today over a proposal to pay 100 million dollars into the pension system, using tobacco settlement money as collateral. KPBS reporter Alison St Joh

The City of San Diego is grappling with labor unions today over a proposal to pay 100 million dollars into the pension system, using tobacco settlement money as collateral. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The city is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find ways to boost payments into the depleted pension fund. Both the mayor and his chief financial officer Jay Goldstone admit that borrowing to plug the pension deficit is risky, bearing in mind rising interest rates. However mayor Sanders says he is obliged to find a way to use extra money city employees have agreed to pay into the pension fund to leverage borrowing.

Sanders: "If we do not begin leveraging the employee pickup, there's a chance we might have to refund money to the employees, so you can see the consequences of doing nothing today are quite severe."

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Tobacco settlement money will only be used to secure the loan. Representatives from the police and fire unions say the plan is not aggressive enough . They say the city should sell off land to catch up on pension fund contributions skipped in previous years. A decision is expected today. 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.