Orange County last week became the second Southern California municipality to take the battle over its billion-plus dollar pension debt to court, taking a page out of City Attorney Mike Aguirre’s book in hoping to roll back retroactive pension benefits given to deputy sheriffs.
Here’s the story on the move from the Orange County Register.
And some background from a previous This Just In post of ours:
Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach, who is pushing the measure, is arguing that the benefits are unconstitutional because they violated a state law that forbids the creation of debt without providing for proper funding.
That’s one of the key arguments employed by Aguirre in his pension suit. (Moorlach’s been closely following our problems here in recent years.)
There are a few key differences between what’s going on in San Diego and in Orange County. … [I]t would be the actual legislative body attempting to take back the benefits. So far here, the attack has come from the City Attorney’s Office. Second, Aguirre’s challenge is much broader, using other laws in his attempt and going after a much wider array of employee benefits.
To date, Aguirre’s legal challenge has largely been unsuccessful.