San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi sent a letter today to Mayor Ed Lee challenging him to a public debate later this month on dueling pension reform measures that will appear on the city’s November ballot, but the mayor said he’s not interested.
Propositions C and D, which both propose higher pension contributions from city employees and caps on pensions for new employees, among other changes, will both be considered by San Francisco’s voters.
Adachi is backing Proposition D, a measure he says would save the city $1.25 billion over the next 10 years. Proposition C, which was crafted by the mayor in collaboration with a coalition of city officials and labor and business leaders, is expected to save around $800 million.
In the letter Adachi sent to the mayor today challenging him to the public debate, he wrote, “I believe that your solution … repeats many of the mistakes that precipitated our pension crisis in the first place, and falls well short of what is necessary to restore our city’s fiscal health.”
Adachi asked Lee to join him for the debate before the end of the month, but the mayor said he does not plan on accepting the request.
“I think we’ve had those debates on and on, and we invited him to be part of our consensus-building pension reform package,” Lee said. “He could not do that and decided to go on his own, so I think he has to live with what I expect to be his defeat.”
Adachi proposed a similar measure on the November 2010 ballot, but it was defeated at the polls.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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