Fwd: In Case You Missed It: Legislature can't shelve pension reform

: In Case You Missed It: Legislature can't shelve pension reform

In Case You Missed It: Legislature can't shelve pension reform Excerpted from an Editorial in The Sacramento Bee "A pension reform measure the governor proposed six months ago has gone nowhere. Then, last week, Assemblyman Warren Furutani, D-Gardena, sent out a letter telling legislators who had pension reform bills pending before his PER&SS Committee that their measures would be sent to interim study – legislative speak for killed, at least for this year. Republican legislators, who had introduced bills that mirror Gov. Jerry Brown's controversial 12-point pension reform plan, interpreted the letter to mean that the governor's plan was dead, too. Furutani says that is not the case. A two-house Conference Committee on Public Employee Pensions is working on comprehensive reform… … Despite the reassurances, there is reason to be skeptical. Democrats in the Legislature have been promising pension reform for years, with little or nothing to show for it. They haven't been able to produce a bill that stops pension spiking, an abuse almost everyone agrees needs to be curbed. Meanwhile, many local governments are drowning in pension debt. Unlike regular policy committees, the Conference Committee on Public Employee Pensions has until the end of the legislative year, Aug. 31, to produce a reform bill that the Legislature can vote on. The committee is expected to produce a draft report in the next few weeks… Yet we shouldn't need to wait until August to see if this push for pension reform is real or just more kabuki. Legislative leaders – Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez – need to state emphatically and definitively that a pension reform package will pass out of their chambers, this year" READ COMPLETE EDITORIAL HOME PAGE | BIOGRAPHY | CONTACT ME | CSSRC

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