Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I mentioned in passing in Tucson City Council Election Preview that the Virginia-based ballot initiative activist Paul Jacob, and his Liberty Initiative Fund, according to his website, is supporting a group called Cincinnati for Pension Reform, which launched a petition drive hoping to gather the 7,443 voter signatures required to place a pension reform charter amendment on this November’s city ballot.
The Tea Party-backed amendment that would semi-privatize Cincinnati’s ailing pension system gathered enough signatures earn a place on the November ballot. German Lopez for the City Beat blog at the Cincinnati Enquirer on August 12 wrote, Pension Amendment Earns Spot on November Ballot:
City officials acknowledge the issues with the current pension system, but they claim the tea party-backed amendment would exacerbate cost problems and reduce payments to future city retirees.
“Under the guise of ‘reform,’ a well-financed out-of-state group is pushing an amendment that spells economic disaster for the future city retirees and the city’s budget,” Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls said in a statement. “Current and future retirees need an income they can live on. This amendment is a budget-buster for retirees and the city.”
City Council condemned the amendment in a resolution unanimously passed on Aug. 7.
Cindi Andrews for the Watchdog blog at the Cincinnatti Enquirer on August 14 provided more detail on the backers, WATCHDOG: Just who is behind new city pension referendum? (Source of $70,000 in funding to pay for petition circulators to gather 8,000 signatures remains a mystery):
The group behind a voter initiative aimed at Cincinnati’s pension problems has seemingly surfaced out of nowhere, first going public with its plans just weeks before filing petitions to make the ballot.
Now it refuses to say where it got nearly $70,000 for paid petition circulators.
Cincinnati for Pension Reform is mostly former tea partiers who have no agenda beyond addressing the $862 million hole in the city’s pension fund, according to Chris Littleton, a West Chester resident working with the committee. He was a co-founder of the state tea party umbrella group Ohio Liberty Coalition.
The committee proposes replacing the city pension with a 401(k)-type option for new employees and requiring a city contribution to the plans. California-based Arno Political Consultants was paid to collect more than 8,000 valid signatures, enough to put the initiative to voters in November.
The initiative is modeled after similar measures that California and Arizona voters have passed in the last year. Another measure, on the November ballot in Tucson, Ariz., is receiving both “advice and funding” from the conservative Liberty Initiative Fund, based in Virginia.
The Liberty Initiative Fund is also touting the Cincinnati initiative on its website, but President Paul Jacob couldn’t be reached Wednesday to see if it is actively involved here.
Cincinnati for Pension Reform first announced its existence and intentions in an email to The Enquirer on July 20 that said the group had “been talking to community residents and leaders for months.”
Littleton, declining to name contributors, said Wednesday the committee didn’t rely on one major donor. He also said the group is now “in the process of raising money from people in Cincinnati, too.”
The group must disclose donors in a campaign finance report by Oct. 24, according to the Hamilton County Board of Elections. In the meantime, Littleton said, “we don’t want to make them the focus.” Littleton has pushed conservative causes around Ohio; both the Ohio Liberty Coalition and another group he formed, the anti-Obamacare group Ohioans For Healthcare Freedom, were among the groups targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for extra scrutiny when they sought tax-exempt status.
The Cincinnati for Pension Reform committee has just three formal members – Burr Robinson, Dan Lillback and Bill Moore – who live in Cincinnati, as required for committees proposing charter amendments.
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[Burr Robinson] doesn’t know a lot of specifics about how this proposal was formed.
“There is an organization – I can’t tell you the name of it – that created a model and offered it to cities,” he said.
Littleton said the ballot language was written by Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law based on measures recently passed in San Diego and San Jose, Calif. Cincinnati labor attorney Gary Greenberg then made some tweaks to it.
Littleton also identified Greenberg as the spokesman for Cincinnati for Pension Reform.
But when interviewed Wednesday afternoon, Greenberg said he didn’t know how the pension proposal would impact the city’s finances: “I think there are people working on that.”
Both mayoral candidates Roxanne Qualls and John Cranley oppose the initiative, as have all members of City Council. Qualls called it a disaster for the city budget and city employees.
German Lopez for the City Beat blog at the Cincinnati Enquirer on August 14 added more details, Foreign Interest: Out-of-town tea party groups take aim at Cincinnati’s struggling pension system:
The city administration’s report says it’s also unclear if the Cincinnati for Pension Reform plan would even work as written: “Certain provisions in the Amendment do not consider requirements imposed by federal legislation and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. In addition, it lacks a litany of plan details that would be required to establish and administer the programs.”
The changes wouldn’t affect police and fire personnel, who use a separate pension system.
In response, local leaders of all political spectrums have joined with unions — including the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the country — in condemning the Cincinnati for Pension Reform proposal. Opponents of the amendment include Democrats such as Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls and ex-Councilman John Cranley, who are running for mayor against each other, and Republicans like Winburn and City Council candidate Amy Murray.
Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the Hamilton County Board of Elections, explains that it’s difficult to verify who exactly is funding the Cincinnati for Pension Reform campaign since such efforts typically use nonprofit organizations to mask the direct source of contributions, but a campaign finance report, which petitioners will have to file on Oct. 24, should shed light on who’s involved in the effort.
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Arno Petition Consultants nearly $70,000 to gather petitions, giving some credence to Burke’s belief.
The payment to Arno Petition Consultants also proves the group has quite a bit of cash on hand for a local campaign, although the sources of funding are so far unknown.
For now, it appears Cincinnati for Pension Reform’s campaign is getting some form of support from tea party groups outside the city and state. National tea party champion Paul Jacob is president of Virginia-based Liberty Initiative Fund and Citizens in Charge, two tea party groups attempting to reform pension systems in cities around the nation. Liberty Initiative Fund’s website in particular has a total of two blog posts, one of which is dedicated to the Cincinnati pension amendment.
The other blog post is dedicated to a similar pension reform initiative on the November ballot in Tucson, Ariz., which officials there claim will bankrupt the city by imposing extraordinary costs for the first 15 years.
According to contribution reports from the campaign, Jacob’s groups have donated about $81,000 in Tucson. The National Taxpayers Union, a conservative anti-tax group, also contributed $52,000.
Much like the proposal in Cincinnati, the Tucson initiative would place future employees in 401k-style plans, so the current pension system would no longer take in a new pool of contributing employees. As employees in the current system retire and no new employees come in with contributions, local taxpayers would be forced to pick up the cost to keep the system afloat for old and current employees.
Cincinnati would also be required to more quickly pay for the unfunded liability it’s built up by underfunding the pension system by varying degrees since 2003. That liability currently stands at $862 million, nearly two and a half years’ worth of the city’s operating budget.
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For tea party supporters, opposition to the city’s public pension plan also has philosophical roots. They tend to support smaller government at every level. In the past, Jacob, of the Liberty Initiative Fund, likened Social Security and other government-supported entitlement programs to “a Ponzi scheme.” Similarly to local pension plans around the nation, tea party supporters see Social Security’s looming deficits as proof governments are making more promises than they can keep.
For AFL-CIO communications director Mike Gillis, the battle for the current pension system is also philosophical. He points out that proposals like the Tucson and Cincinnati initiatives are typically backed by Wall Street businessmen and brokers who stand to financially benefit from more people taking up individual 401k-style plans, even if it comes at the expense of the average worker.
Although Gillis calls the current pension system modest, he argues the 401k-style plans would still be much worse for city employees.
“They’re not being paid as much as they were (while) working, and they’re not getting rich by any means,” he says. “This pension is designed to give them enough money to live on in their senior years.”
The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law is yet another anti-tax Libertarian nonprofit based in Ohio. The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law is a member of the State Policy Network through its work for the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. See, SPN Updates - Publications » State Policy Network. The State Policy Network aids ALEC and spins disinformation in the states. See, State Policy Network - SourceWatch. The SPN affiliate in Arizona is, you guessed it, the Goldwater Institute. SPN Members.
There really is a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Too bad we need to read the Cincinnati Enquirer to find out what is happening here in Tucson because our local media is so godawful.
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