Politics

San Diego City Retiree Health Benefit Compromise

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published April 21, 2009 at 8:24 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders says the labor agreements being hammered out with city employee unions will do more than help plug this year’s budget gap, they will save the city millions of dollars in pension and health benefits in the future. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The city’s labor unions have balked at asking existing employees to contribute more to their retiree health plans. Those benefits are a $1.2 billion liability for the city. But unions have agreed to freeze the benefits for two years.

Sanders says, since retiree health costs have been rising about 10 percent a year, the freeze will actually save the city millions of dollars.

Become a KPBS sponsor

"Retiree health care savings is probably one of the more significant pieces of this," the mayor says. "Just by freezing the benefits at the current level of $740 a month, that reduction to the unfunded liability, if played out over a long period of time, would be about $350 million."

The unions have agreed to study different kinds of retiree health plans over the next two years, with a view to possible changes to those benefits for existing employees in 2010.

New employees hired since 2005 are not been eligible for guaranteed retiree health care coverage.

The city council is expected to vote on the labor agreements on Tuesday in closed session.

Alison St John, KPBS News

Tags

Alison St John

twitter

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.