Three Strikes and They’re Out

Unable to secure funding for paid initiative circulators and lacking public support for their measures, Chuck Reed and Carl DeMaio announced January 18, 2015, they would not seek to put either of their proposed pension initiatives on the 2016 ballot.

Instead, the less than dynamic duo of ex-politicians announced a list of events that needed to come true for one of their pension measures might prevail; that the California economy enter a recession, that the Supreme Court rule against public unions in the pending Friedrichs case and that voter turnout would be low in the 2018 election-which they claimed would be their next attempt to put a measure on the ballot.

This is the third time Reed has announced a statewide pension initiative, only to fold for lack of public support and funding to pay signature gatherers. There is no groundswell of voters willing to circulate the petitions on their own time. Clearly this initiative was not the “bulletproof” measure the duo loudly proclaimed but instead adds to their list of failures over the past several years.

Prior pension initiatives they proposed by the Reed and DeMaio were never circulated for the ballot because they crumbled under the light of public scrutiny. One of Reed’s proposed and dropped initiatives received an Attorney General summary Reed claimed was misleading — but a Judge ruled the summary was accurate. The duo abandoned another initiative even staunch pension critics pensions labeled as “false” Reed and DeMaio’s claims about the initiative’s scope.

Of course, 2015 was a terrible year for Reed, DeMaio, and the pension measure Reed helped pass in San Jose and DeMaio in San Diego. In the summer of 2015, the San Jose City Council voted to rescind the Reed measure. And late last year the Public Employment Relations Board -a state agency—ruled DeMaio’s San Diego measure was improperly placed on the ballot and must be rescinded (that matter will now be on appeal).

Over the next two years, Reed and DeMaio will desperately hope for bad news to give their proposed pension measures and extinguished political careers life. But, should they resurface, in the words of Dave Low, Chairman of Californians for Retirement Security “They can be assured that any scheme they cook up for 2018 will meet the same fate of their previous efforts because we will fight it with our full arsenal.”

By ADDA Board of Directors

Originally published on LAADDA.com February 1, 2016