The 2014 Pension 40: Sam Liccardo

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< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On

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Sam Liccardo
Mayor-elect
San Jose, California
PNR

In November, San Jose, California, voters elected city councilman Sam Liccardo, 44, mayor, and the election was in many respects a referendum on pension reform. In mid-2012 the city had approved a ballot initiative known as Measure B to reform its struggling pension plan. The measure passed with 69 percent of the votes and gave city retirees the option of staying in their current defined benefit system and paying a higher contribution or switching to a less costly plan. Then-mayor Chuck Reed championed Measure B and made pension reform his signature issue. But public employee unions challenged the plan in the courts, and at the end of 2013 a judge for the state superior court for Santa Clara County overturned key provisions. Reed himself could not run again. Liccardo had voted to put Measure B on the ballot, and as a mayoral candidate — endorsed by Reed — he remained committed to reform. Union critics of the plan supported his opponent, Santa Clara County Supervisor David Cortese, who pledged to settle with the unions and reframed the discussion around the retention of fire and police workers and public safety — an increasingly prevalent argument in the pension reform wars. Both candidates were Democrats, and they ended up in a runoff. Pension reform in San Jose now belongs to Liccardo, who must deal with the legal challenges and decide whether to uphold and implement Measure B or head back to the negotiating table with the unions. Neither will be easy.


The 2014 Pension 40

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Bruce Rauner
Illinois
John and
Laura Arnold

Laura and John
Arnold Foundation
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
Rahm Emanuel
Chicago
David Boies
Boies, Schiller & Flexner
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Randy DeFrehn
National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans
Damon Silvers
AFL-CIO
Laurence Fink
BlackRock
Chris Christie
New Jersey
Robin Diamonte
United Technologies Corp.
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Ted Eliopoulos
California Public Employees’ Retirement System
John Kline
Minnesota
J. Mark Iwry
U.S. Treasury Department
Gina Raimondo
Rhode Island
Phyllis Borzi
U.S. Labor Department
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Orrin Hatch
Utah
Abigail Johnson
Fidelity Investments
Ted Wheeler
Oregon
Caitlin Long
Morgan Stanley
James Hoffa
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
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Amy Kessler
Prudential Financial
Alejandro
García Padilla

Puerto Rico
Christopher Klein
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia
Steven Rhodes
Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Kevin de León
California
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David Draine
Pew Charitable Trusts
Jordan Marks
National Public Pension Coalition
Sam Liccardo
California
Joshua Rauh
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman
Pension Rights Center
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Timothy Blake
Moody’s Investors Service
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University
Edward (Ted) Siedle
Benchmark Financial Services
Daniel Loeb
Third Point
Judy Mares
Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department
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Andrew Biggs
American Enterprise Institute
Andy Stern
Columbia University
Kenneth Mehlman
KKR & Co.
Teresa Ghilarducci
New School for Social Research
A. Melissa Moye
U.S. Treasury Department

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