S.D. Council to Consider Change to Reduce Retiree Health Care Deficit

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 7, 2008 at 6:55 AM PST

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

The San Diego City Council will consider a change today that would reduce its billion dollar retiree health care deficit to $700 million. If approved, the city will pay millions more into its retiree

The San Diego City Council will consider a change today that would reduce its billion dollar retiree health care deficit to $700 million. If approved, the city will pay millions more into its retiree health care fund every year. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

San Diego is not the only city facing a massive challenge. A new federal rule kicks in this year to force all public agencies to declare their retiree health liabilities in their annual accounts.

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San Diego's Chief Financial Officer, Jay Goldstone, says he wants to start paying down the liability by contributing to an irrevocable trust held by the state's pension fund. He proposes to gradually ramp up the payments from the $23 million a year the city is paying now, to $75 million a year by 2010.

Goldstone: So that's $40 million to $50 million that you are setting aside that might otherwise have gone to programs or services and activities but as they say you pay me now or you pay me later. These are obligations you're still going to have to pay.

Goldstone says ratings agencies will like the move. They've barred San Diego from the bond market because the city previously hid its massive pension deficits . He says if the city doesn't bite the bullet now, its retiree health payments could creep up to $100 million a year after the year 2020.

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.