< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
28
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
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 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 |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 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 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 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 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 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 |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| 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 |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| 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 |
