Chow chow chow!
Jerry Sanders can splurge on his Thanksgiving meal courtesy of the San Diego Labor Council, thanks to the gift of a can of delicious cat food.
Here, kitty, kitty . . .
The San Diego mayor was given the feline treat and a handwritten note courtesy of Lorena Gonzalez, the Labor Council’s head, according to a Friday press release from the council.
The 27-cent-can of Kroger Farm Fresh Grill cat food was an edible* protest against Sanders’ proposal to shift city workers away from a defined-benefit pension to a defined-contribution retirement plan like a 401k.
*(If you’re a cat)
Gonzalez said that shortchanges city employees, because they don’t get Social Security, because the city decided years ago to stop paying into the fund.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders
“What is a retiree to do when the market crashes and seniors lose nearly all value of that 401k, without the safety net of Social Security? I guess Mayor Sanders would simply let them live on cat food,” Gonzalez said in the press release.
Gonzalez has a good point about the lack of Social Security. The city should examine how to provide some compensation for that lack.
But as one of the millions of Americans who have a 401k, I find disturbing Gonzalez’ passing reference to “when” the market collapses and nearly all its value is lost. Public employees with defined-benefit pensions don’t get hurt at all when the market crashes. If they received 401k-style retirement plans like most of us in the private sector, public employees would have a bigger stake in a good economy.
The problem lies in excessive pension demands that the city of San Diego shouldn’t have granted. But city employees who asked for these unsustainable benefits also bear the blame, as well as the voters who elected the previous mayors and city councilmembers who approved the unsustainable benefits. At this point, all the options are going to cause financial pain; the only question is how it will be distributed.
As for Sanders, he’s looking to recast his image as a fiscal conservative after his disastrous flop in trying to intimidate voters into raising taxes with Proposition D. It’s rather late in his tenure as mayor, which has been characterized by a lack of transparency, for that transformation to be convincing.
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DISCLAIMER: As with all I write here, this is my opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times.