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411: ALADS 411: Don’t Sign The Petitions for Pension 'Reform'
ALADS
Friday, February 12, 2010
Three ballot initiatives are aimed at cutting state and local employee pensions and your retiree health benefits. Don’t sign any of them. Urge your friends, family and neighbors not to sign either.
The new generation of public employee pension ‘reform’ would:
* Jeopardize the stability of retirement funds across the state
* Significantly reduce pension compensation,
and
* Raise retirement ages across the board.
These measures are particularly dangerous if they reach the statewide ballot. Public pension ‘reformers’ have adjusted their approach to overcome the opposition that defeated their earlier attempts.
Popular sentiment is unfortunately against us.
Many Californians are out of work, more are concerned about their job security, and even more are buying into the rhetoric from ‘reform’ advocates who claim public employee pensions are too expensive.
ALADS members should be very concerned. If the election were held today, a majority of Californians would vote for pension ‘reform’. Given accurate information about the current status of pension systems and who pays for the retirement benefits, voters split more evenly. But the ability of voters to understand these issues remains unclear, and promoting that education would be enormously expensive.
The only sure way to defeat these wrong-headed ballot measures is to make sure they don’t secure enough signatures to get on the ballot.
Don’t let anyone you know sign the pension ‘reform’ petitions aimed at cutting pensions and your retiree health benefit.
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