Santa Clara County’s Democratic Central Committee held a meeting Thursday to sign off on its endorsements for this June’s election, and things got weird. Factions formed when it came time voice support for candidates in each district of the San Jose City Council, and the choices showed a surprising split in the house of labor.

It appears Ballot Measure B is ready to go to voters. Superior Court judges granted small victories to both the city of San Jose and labor when clarifying what language should be used.

Never mess with Bob Kieve—that’s the lesson San Jose Councilmember Ash Kalra learned after trying to bow out of San Jose Rotary Club’s pension reform debate next week against council colleague Pete Constant. David Ginsborg, a Rotary member and the right fist of County Assessor Larry Stone, says Kalra was scared he would be branded as anti-pension reform in the debate when really he’s just anti-Mayor Reed. But others tell a different tale.

Nothing stings as much as a politician you helped gain public office betraying you. It’s not uncommon, but it doesn’t make the pain any less real. The result, of course, is predictable. The aggrieved party works doubly hard for the next opponent; which brings us to the sad case of Councilmember Rose Herrera. Herrera would not be a San Jose Councilmember if not for the support of progressives, local democrats and the South Bay Labor Council. Her first campaign was literally run out of Labor’s headquarters.

The city’s fight over pension reform and dwindling reserves resulted in San Jose’s credit being downgraded by Moody’s Investment Service in New York. The impact, according to City Manager Debra Figone at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, will be a cost of $350,000 to the city.

UPDATE: The California Superior Court set a hearing for Monday, April 2, to rule on competing lawsuits regarding Measure B.—Editor

Councilmember Pete Constant and Ballot Measure B’s campaign treasurer, Ben Roth, plan to file their own complaint in California Superior Court on Friday morning. Their petition claims opponents of the pension and benefits reform ballot measure used false and misleading statements in their arguments. The filing comes almost a week after labor unions filed their own lawsuit over ballot language. A judge could rule on both the unions’ lawsuit and the more recent petition ahead of the scheduled April 3 hearing.

Just when things seem to be going better for Mayor Chuck Reed, with a solid council vote on his pension reform ballot measure and his first-ever projected budget surplus, his predecessors have to go and steal his thunder. Instead of waiting for Reed to follow through on his plan to open four new libraries that closed the day construction stopped, former mayor Susan Hammer and council members Frank Fiscalini and Trixie Johnson trotted out their own plans to save libraries—show-offs.

Mayor Chuck Reed called an audit requested by local state legislators “politically motivated.” He is correct. But calling a fake “fiscal emergency,” exaggerating the size of the problem and calling on voters to pass a pension reform ballot measure that most attorneys, including myself, believe won’t stand a court challenge is also “politically motivated.”

“Love is in the air,” Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones declared in her opening remarks for the invocation of Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Not long after that, everyone proceeded to attack one another. The public comments portion of the council meeting featured a passionate cast of characters speaking for or against the June retirement benefits reform ballot, which passed by an 8-3 vote.

The City Council will finalize a decision Tuesday for a pension reform ballot measure. This is the question that will likely be put to voters on June 5: “To protect essential services: neighborhood police patrols, fire stations, libraries, community centers, streets and parks, shall the Charter be amended to reform retirement benefits of City employees and retirees by: increasing employees’ contributions; establishing a voluntary reduced pension plan for current employees and pension cost and benefit limitations for new employees; reforming disability retirements to prevent abuses; temporarily suspending retiree COLAs during emergency; and requiring voter approval for increases in future pension benefits?”

In an attempt to box in Mayor Chuck Reed on his worst-case scenario of the city’s pension crisis, a complaint was filed with the SEC on Monday on behalf of three unions. The complaint claims Reed didn’t disclose pertinent information on the pension crisis in forms filed with the SEC and misled investors who helped the city issue $435 million in bonds last year.

I had some calls last week on the topic of pensions and the June ballot measure. Several people were under the impression that San Jose will eliminate pensions altogether, which is not the case. Other callers wanted to replace the current system with a 401K-type benefit. I think there are other options to pension reform that would save San Jose money. For one thing, we should eliminate spending on all items not in the City Charter.

Recently, a SJI columnist who also is a city councilmember suggested that libraries should be staffed with volunteers to avoid closure and increase hours of operation. I applaud this outside the box type of thinking, but why stop at libraries?

Last week, the council discussed a poll of residents/likely voters regarding their views about tax increases. The majority of the Council appears to be considering a June ballot measure for a tax increase. Since the poll respondents are anonymous and nearly everyone on this blog is anonymous, I thought I would ask the question: Which tax do you want? How much of it?

It has been a tough week for Mayor Chuck Reed. An enterprising investigative reporter, Jenna Susko, from KNTV News challenged the mayor’s veracity of the “fiscal crisis” and exposed his administration’s exaggeration of the unfunded liability facing San Jose. The mayor’s opponents were quick to jump on the news and quickly filed an ethics complaint. A complaint which, ironically, is justified under Reed’s own ethic reforms, which state that public officials shouldn’t lie. But the regulation—like many Reed Reforms—is unenforceable. A lawyer for the ethics commission advised the body not to investigate as they have no jurisdiction over the matter. That is lawyer-speak for you can’t do anything even if he did lie.

The $250 million question: Did Mayor Chuck Reed and other city officials knowingly lie about the worst-case scenario for San Jose’s pension crisis? An ethics complaint that included almost 800 city employee signatures was turned into the Elections Commission Thursday. The complaint, filed on the heels of an NBC Bay Area report, states that Reed, Director of Retirement Services Russell Crosby and former city actuary Michale Moehle knowingly used false information to bolster the mayor’s push to declare a fiscal emergency, which may have also had an adverse effect on pension reform negotiations. In an interview Thursday, Mayor Reed defended the worst-case scenario projection.