The Arnold Foundation is clearly in the forefront of nationwide efforts to scale back pensions for state and municipal workers.
Photo Credit: Frying Pan News
September 3, 2013 |
Benjamin Gamboa doesn’t know John Arnold, but they are linked by a shared concern over the fate of public-employee pensions in California.
“I’m proud to have a pension,” the 30-year-old Gamboa says. “I believe every American should have a pension.”
The two men live in very different worlds. Gamboa is a research analyst at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, California. Arnold is a hedge-fund billionaire from Houston, Texas.
There’s another difference between them: Arnold recently had a representative present at a secret “pension summit” held at a Sacramento hotel, where strategies to limit public employee retirement benefits were discussed; Gamboa, a union member, did not – representatives of labor were specifically not invited.
“Pension reform” has become the latest battle cry in a seemingly endless war that has ostensibly been declared against tax-dollar waste, but whose single-minded purpose has been to slash the job protections and benefits enjoyed by California’s working middle class. Pension-cutting advocates have filled airwaves, websites and op-ed pages with stories about employees retiring in early middle age on six-figure pensions. The reality is that the average state and municipal worker retires on about $26,000 a year.
The Sacramento summit took place May 22 at the Citizen Hotel, a luxury boutique inn two blocks from the state capitol. It was hosted by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based conservative and libertarian public policy group that embraces privatizing government functions and cutting public employee pensions. The foundation’s most prominent trustee is billionaire businessman David Koch, a longtime advocate of reducing public sector retirement benefits.
The meeting’s agenda – a copy of which was obtained by Frying Pan News — was written in the terse, opaque prose of event planners, but still offers a glimpse into the group’s plans. Among other items, it lists an hour-long session on “Overcoming Opposition: Anticipating and Addressing Government and Union Opposition.” Perhaps the agenda was even more important for what it did not say: That the attack on public sector pensions may soon be transformed into a state ballot initiative that would change California’s constitution.
The participants in the closed-door meeting were Republicans and Democrats, and included public officials and representatives of numerous foundations and think tanks intent on reducing pensions for public employees.
Among those attending were San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed; former San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio; Josh McGee, a vice president at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation; Marcia Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility; Dan Pellissier, president of California Pension Reform; Ed Ring, executive director of the California Public Policy Center (CPPC) and editor of UnionWatch.org; Jack Dean, executive director at the Reason Foundation and editor of PensionTsunami.com, and Steven Greenhut, a journalist and author of the book Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation. ...
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