Nice article explaining Donna Frye's "voting for" pension resolutions...

[cascadiance]

After the first election was over, Sanders stopped being "the nice guy" that got him second position, and went into immediate attack mode on Donna Frye. One of the cornerstones of his criticisms was that Donna Frye voted for the pension system that she now decries. As a simplistic line to take to voters, this would probably work well as a "one liner". And you can be sure he's going to continue to take this one-liner as a bullet point on his campaign literature up until November.

Scott Lewis of Voice of San Diego (thanks for having at least some decent non-Republican tainted media around here!) just put up an article on their site that really goes to the heart of the issue and explains well how Donna Frye and Diann Shipione, were both led astray by the arcane consent agenda of the city council where they missed a third item dealing with the underfunding of the pension fund that was burried further in the council's "consent agenda". Donna Frye was the only council member that worked with Diann Shipione to expose the mess with the first two items.

Anyway, this article explains it a lot better than I can. We should study it and be prepared to have some simple one or two sentences to reflect what is here to voters when we campaign for her this fall. It will be a necessary item, and this article will be a useful tool.

From:
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=euLTJbMUKvH&b=312470&ct=1249103

It's Not a Rock-Star Free Ride for Frye This Time

By SCOTT LEWIS
Voice Columnist
Monday, Aug. 1, 2005

...

In early 2002, city officials and administrators of the pension system began to realize that it was going to explode. The pension fund had reached a trigger point where the city was required to put in massive amounts of cash to get it up to a certain level of health. The retirement system, if it was going to do its job, was about to send the city a bill that would have given everyone in San Diego a bad case of sticker shock.

The city simply did not have the kind of cash needed to pay it.

Rather than announce this to the public, city officials concocted a plan to avoid the payment, with the retirement board's blessing.

It's important to remember, that to get the retirement board's approval, the city offered employees a pension benefit enhancement at the same time. Because the retirement board was dominated by city employees, that proved to be a shrewd move.

But the arrangement also needed the City Council's blessing.

...