A San Diego Government Worker's Retirement

Overpaid Government Worker reports on a Wall Street Journal story:

This summer, San Diego's mayor succeeded in negotiating a reduction in retirement benefits for city employees -- but only for new hires, starting in 2009. The deal left the benefits negotiated in 1996 and 2002 untouched, and both city politicians and unions say those bennies are "sacrosanct." They include 50,000 years of pension credit for time not served that the city all but gave away, as well as a provision that allowed employees to take early retirement and a deferred-retirement program at the same time.

San Diego's contributions to the pension fund have quadrupled in recent years, and the fund is still $1.2 billion in the hole. California state law caps property tax levies. So San Diego has paid for the increased contributions by deferring road maintenance, and skimping on library funding and municipal recreation programs. And the city is still falling further behind.

The garden at this skunk party is City Attorney Mike Aguirre, who has made himself very unpopular with the political establishment by suing to rescind the 1996 and 2002 pension promises. Though a liberal Democrat normally sympathetic to unions, he says the benefits were granted as part of "the largest municipal securities fraud in American history," and so taxpayers shouldn't have to honor them.