*Pension plan avoids the heavy lifting

*Please note change in italics...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is announcing a bunch of reforms this morning that would scale back pension costs, but the proposals only involve newly hired city workers. From what I've seen, they don't begin to address all the money required to pay current retirees, as well as folks now working for the city who plan to retire over the next few years - and understandably expect their fair share. Villaraigosa is thus trumpeting reforms aimed at people who don't even exist on city payrolls (and taking credit for solving the problem). The trick is in handling the hundreds of millions of dollars in pension obligations that are now due, and which will be eating into the city's general fund. Nobody wants to touch that one, most especially the mayor. By the way, the proposal involving police and firefighters is designed to save $173 million over 30 years for every 1,000 police and firefighters hired. which comes out to a whopping $5.7 million a year. The budget shortfall for 2010-2011 to already running $64 million and we're not even four months into the new year.