Letters: The wrong kind of pension reform

Re “Put pension reform on the ballot,” Opinion, June 26

Marcia Fritz asks voters to require that future public employees in California “share the risks associated with their [pension] plans with taxpayers.”

Fritz doesn’t mention that shifting from traditional pensions to 401(k) plans has utterly destroyed pension security for private sector workers. In a June 2010 article, Reuters columnist Mark Miller wrote that a Federal Reserve survey found that the net worth for the median American family fell nearly 40% in the three-year period ending 2010, and that the Employee Benefit Research Institute says that 60% of households tell it that their savings and investments (excluding home values) total less than $25,000.

There is a real need for pension reform in California, but shifting public workers to 401(k) plans should not be part of the solution. Along with reform of public pensions, we should be working to restore pension security in the private sector.

David Lewis Muir

Palos Verdes Estates

The writer chairs the Retirement Security Committee of the California Retired County Employees Assn.

Fritz writes: “Public employees in California earn salaries similar to their counterparts in the private sector.”

I am a retired attorney who specialized in environmental law at the California Department of Justice. I served the state for almost 34 years, and upon retirement my annual salary as a supervising attorney was $130,000. There are indeed lawyers in the private sector earning an annual wage in the range of my salary at retirement, but they happen to be in the first five years of practice.

Fritz should poll the very experienced private attorneys I regularly faced in court (in my effort to protect the state’s general fund) and ask what salary a 34-year veteran private attorney earns. I am not defending billings of $400 an hour, but let’s put an end to the suggestion that public employees earn the same as their counterparts in the private sector.

Donald Robinson

San Pedro

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