As the citizens of Wisconsin repudiated the union-backed effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday night, voters in San Diego and San Jose struck a similar blow against Big Labor on the West Coast.
The New York Times reports:
In San Diego and San Jose, voters overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers.
Around 70 percent of San Jose voters favored the pension measure, while 66 percent of San Diego residents supported a similar measure.
Both cities have long faced problems funding civil servant pensions, but an exuberant San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, said that the passage of the ballot initiatives "definitively ends the pension crisis."
Liberal lawmakers were less pleased. San Diego Councilman Todd Gloria, a Democrat, called the initiative, "bad legislation," and threatened that, "this will be litigated for years and again the bill for that legislation will come out of the taxpayers’ pocket."