Judge to give preview ruling on pension case

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published June 22, 2006 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

A San Diego Superior Court Judge will issue a tentative summary judgment today on whether the city of San Diego pension benefits should be rolled back. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Many protagonists in the city of San Diego's ongoing pension drama are on tenterhooks, waiting to hear Judge Jeffrey Barton's initial reaction to arguments that benefit increases should be rolled back. Judie Italiano is president of the city's white collar workers union, one of four municipal unions that don't want the benefits rescinded.

Italiano: "We're hoping the judge will have sorted things out to where either we're going to go ahead with a trial on this hearing or if he's got something that will point us in a different direction, so we're quite anxious to hear what he has to say."

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City Attorney Mike Aguirre hopes the judge will accept his case that the benefits were illegally granted in 1996 and 2002 and therefore should be rolled back. His move to ask for a summary judgment is an attempt to could avoid a lengthy trial. 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.