Mayor urged to reconsider pension benefit rollbacks

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published April 26, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego City Council president Scott Peters has asked Mayor Jerry Sanders to reconsider the cost effectiveness of trying to roll back benefits increases, that the city attorney says were illegally g

San Diego City Council president Scott Peters has asked Mayor Jerry Sanders to reconsider the cost effectiveness of trying to roll back benefits increases, that the city attorney says were illegally granted. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

San Diego city council President Scott Peters says the money the city would save from benefit rollbacks, is much less originally estimated. Aguirre says 700 million dollars are at stake. Peters says he believes only about 48 million dollars would be affected, out of a deficit of 1.7 billion.

Peters: "And the question we need to consider when we plan our budget and our expenses and our strategy is it worth all the pain we are putting ourselves through and the legal expense when that's all we can recover?"

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City Attorney Mike Aguirre disputes Peters' estimate and says this is simply an attempt to put the brakes on law suits that potentially involve elected officials, including Peters himself.
Peters' question to the mayor comes at a time when the city attorney and the mayor are at odds over the question of using pension obligation bonds. 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.