I luv this stuff. Essentially the argument is San Francisco residents should continue to see their vital City services cut and pay higher taxes to sudsidize the benefits of City employees, benefits like guaranteed pensions they don't get and most City employees don't even live in San Francisco...

"A custodian making $40,000 a year...?" What City is he talking about? The AVERAGE wages and benefits paid to a City janitor in the current budget is $73,000 a year, including any furlough days. He also mentions firefighters $159,000, nurses $174,000 and gardeners $84,000 as if these folks absolutely cannot contibute more for their benefits- laughable.

Of course, this elected official fails to mention that City health care is a $4 billion unfunded liablity growing at $300 million a year and that there will be no health care for employees and retirees down the road wthout major changes OR, under Prop B any employee regardless of number of dependents can purchase health insurance for $450 a month, a rate no one could get purchasing the same in the private sector...

This City desperately needs pension reform as pension costs gut our General Fund.

Why did the CHP recently agree to increase their pension and health contributions and why did ten of San Jose's eleven public employee unions agree to across-the-board 10% cuts in pay and benefts? Someone should tell the author there is a benefit cost problem.

SF voters aren't fools.

Will everyone look at the larger picture?

The public needs to look at the rising cost of healthcare and work to control it. One of the best ways is to make people aware of how much they're paying. By making it pay it themselves.

Having no clue what your employer pays for your healthcare leads people to think it's cheap and should be protected. They completely ignore the fact that it's a bill someone is paying.

WHY are we paying people such high salaries in SF? Why are nurses paid 170,000 and firefighters 150,000+? Don't people realize this drives up the cost of everything? It will put everyone out of business if it keeps going up.

Enough with Marc and Ammiano acting like they know how to run a business.

I am a San Franciscian firefighter, not making anywhere near 156K a year. I live paycheck to paycheck, supporting a family, just like many working for the City. I agree we all have to do our part to rescue what has been financially done to our City by past politicians over the years, but this is not the way. Maybe Adachi should walk the walk and talk the talk and start paying into his retirement like many other city workers have been doing for years.

Prop B has too many hidden agendas that have nothing to do with pension reform. Please, educate yourself, talk to someone gardening in the park, or a nurse at General hospital, and learn what Prop B is really all about!

I won't attempt to claim that the driver behind Assemblyman Ammiano's opinion piece -- that the increase in health-care costs which will result from adoption of Prop B is unfair to his affected constituents, for the reasons stated -- is anything other than his wish to act in their best interests.

However, it is a bit disingenuous for him to trot out the single example that he does, wherein the single mother sees her annual health-care cost increase by a number in the thousands. It's a huge jump, no doubt. But as a column in the SF Examiner pointed out today, this example refers to just one -- and by far the most expensive -- of the three existing health care plans offered to City employees.

The *percentage* increase for family participants in the other plans, under Prop B, is in fact similar to that for the aformentioned single mother.

It would appear that, by switching plans, a City employee at that highest contribution level could drastically reduce his/her costs, and that the other two plans would come in cheaper than this high-priced one, even were Prop B to pass.

I have not researched enough to know about the differences between these plans, as obviously the coverage levels can vary, and thus I realize that switching plans is likely not an apples-to-apples deal. Still, in an environment where all City residents are being affected by cutbacks in munipical services, and where for many the thought of free health coverage -- if even any at all -- represents fantasy, asking voters to essentially continue to subsidize City employee benefits could be a tough sell.

In the interest of fairness, then, a more representative example of the weight of Prop B's negative impact would have been appropriate, rather than the highest, most headline-grabbing raw number that impacts 3.4% of the covered workforce.

BTW @ Guest 2:07 AM, I wouldn't mind knowing what you mean by the "hidden agendas" and "what Prop B" is really all about", and I don't say that facetiously. Clue me in, for if this is a smokescreen for higher-up backroom deals being done, then that's something that Ammiano should really highlight in his objection.

On the other hand, it had better not be simply because the mere *suggestion* of pension reform, and paying something for benefits received, is anathema to the City employee workforce. If so, then the time has come that private-sector workers have begun to believe that this protected benefit -- which they don't receive -- needs to go away. Sure, if I were a union worker, I'd be upset that these perks are being rescinded, but I might also realize that in the current state of affairs, there's no way they could last.

Too many hidden facts in this Prposition B, and it does not solve the city budget problem. The real issue is to change the whole city structure to get rid of those lazy emplyees and keep those good workers. I was working in the private companies for many years and since I have worked for the city for fifteen years, I found out it have too much bureaucracy problems in the management levels, but we also have many diligent good employees in my section although few bad apples do exist, but this proposition will also punish good hard working people's benefits, and it may impact the public service in the future. I saw too much waste in the management level. For example, all departemnts are encouraged to spend all mony in the fisical year even they do not need to buy so many equipments and city trucks or cars. The city is too fat and should lay off more lazy employees like any industrial compnay instead of punishing of good employees. However, this city has too many politicans and play too much dirty politics which inclde this proposition author,a rich former public defender Jeff Adachi, if he is so concern about economy and city people's of the San Francisco, he can easily donate his 50% of his money to help us but create more problems. this proposition B will not cure the disease but will generate more side effects.

I am a single mom and SF employee. This year we have given back 5.625 of our salaries which is a chunk of my paycheck. I live from paycheck to paycheck and can not afford to pay more, so therefore I will have to stop paying for insurance for my children. Where will they go if they have a medical emergency. The ER. Who will have to pay for that treatment, the taxpayers of SF. I want people to also understand that as employees we spend most of our income in SF. Supporting small business, buying lunch, coffee, our furniture, and our clothing etc. What happens if this workforce no longer has any extra income at all. Who will be hurt too. All those small businesses. Where is the savings? Why does Moritz the billionaire care. Could it be he thinks there will be more money for the upper echelon of SF. There certainly will be less for the working person and small businesses. And certainly less city taxes collected from small business. Think about the real economics of this. Once again it is the stealth millionaires and billionaires getting the average person is SF to vote against their own interest and do the bidding of the ubber wealthy.

The real problem with this Prop is that it is not on a sliding scale for contributions based on salary. I think most of the commentators would reach an agreement that reform would be acceptable if it did exist in the prop. Even so, why is it so outrageous that a city employee under the Prop with 2 OR MORE dependents pay 439 instead of 230 per month? Is that really ridiculous? City Taxpayers should not be subsidizing entire families just because one happens to be a public employee. Don't get me wrong, I wished for a public option but this is ridiculous.

I have been looking at this for awhile, as a business person with a spouse employed by SFUSD for the last 10 years. Here's what I have now seen:

- husband makes less than $100k
- family of four pays now close $1000 OUT OF POCKET for an HMO option (not Kaiser) and Adachi wants to increase that??
- do note that as someone has worked in the private sector, the healthcare benefits are not better, in fact, they are actually worse.
- those costs have actually almost doubled from what they were a few years ago.
- the city worker plan is more expensive.
- kaiser now costs a family of four the same as the HMO.

How is that fair, and now we should pay more for less? It certainly seems that this prop is doing nothing but supporting the insurance companies' price gouging? Why are the costs for healthcare skyrocketing? Because of the insurance companies - what they charge and what they pay out.

Here's what a responsible business person would do - and SFUSD and the teacher's union should do: ask for a better deal. Or, take that money and put it into an interest bearing account and pay out-of-pocket with major medical on the side.

Health Insurance should have never been put on the table. Just like Biden argued with Maddow that health insurance was good and would not be made less crappy by the health insurance corporate welfare act, as he's never had to have real health insurance like we get as City dependents, most San Franciscans believe that health insurance is a bitch and that nobody wishes crappier insurance on their neighbors.

As far as pensions go, where are the investigations into the mismanagement of mayoral appointed pension boards over the past decade? Where was Jeff Adachi, Esq. when it came time for the enforcement of Prop H requiring cops and firefighters to make the pension fund whole?

Looking forward, pension contributions should be progressively scaled to match income level and should rise to a ceiling when the fund is draining, and drop to a floor when it is filling up.

Locking the City into fixed pension and health insurance numbers will result in the City becoming increasingly uncompetitive if the labor market ever recovers, but it seems that billionaire speculators like Moritz have no interest in a recovering labor market, to the contrary, Americans are a pesky annoyance in their goals of raking in even more money.

-marc

I am a City Employee and am living paycheck to paycheck. It's already tough having to take the 5.7% paycut this year. We've done our part! It's not fair that we still have to give up more!

I'm not...

It's embarrassing to look around this city we love so much and see how run down and dirty it is, compared the other leading destination cities in the world.

I hear tourists gasp when they mistakenly venture into the Tenderloin, mId-Market street and 6th Street areas.

Compare our delapidated old subway system to that of most developing nations and you won't see much difference.

Most City employees voluntarily took pay cuts as of July 1 and most City job vacancies that oocurred in the last 2 years remain unfilled due to departmental budget cuts.

So now you have less people, trying to carry the same workload, for less money.
And now, you want to come back to them and ask for more?
If I looked around this city and saw it sparkle like Vienna, I could imagine cutting around the edges some...

You think this City literally stinks now? Just wait until you hit the people that bathe and nurse this old city with a double whammy and see how they react. I know how I would. I'm just being realistic. Productivity could slow down to a crawl and management could not do a thing about it...

I understand that there is a fiscal problem, but I also know that Prop B is not the way to address it. Let City Hall open up the books and let's all take a good look at where we can make reasonable and substational cutbacks. Also, let's charge a $100 per year license to any person that comes into the City to work, but does not live here.

Jeff Adachi and his benefactors have no chance at this Prop passing or occupying room 200. Think outside the box...