In a Reader Rebuttal Orange County Employees Association General Manager Nick Berardino calls out the Orange County Register on their misleading coverage of the public discussion of government employee pension costs.
“It’s becoming increasingly evident that The Orange County Register and some members of the far right are not actually interested in reforming pensions. They’re interested in further reducing the voices of working people and inciting anger among their base.”
In response to a letter that the Orange County Employees Association sent a letter to elected officials across the county a week before the GOP initiated Pension Boot Camp, urging a collaborative approach to the pension discussion rather than an adversarial one. Berardino points out in his rebuttal:
The letter pointed out successful reforms that OCEA and the county have achieved together through respectful and honest collaboration, including reforming the county’s retiree medical plan for a savings of more than $800 million and creating a hybrid retirement plan that is now being used as a model across the country.
The Register wrote an editorial misconstruing the intent of our message. Instead of echoing the spirit of collaboration that has been so successful in Orange County, The Register inaccurately interpreted it as a threat to elected officials and another example of this pension war.
As a result, a local Republican blog that had already threatened elected officials across the county if they did not attend the boot camp, echoed The Register’s adversarial call.
Berardino closes with this observation:
It’s becoming increasingly evident that The Orange County Register and some members of the far right are not actually interested in reforming pensions. They’re interested in further reducing the voices of working people and inciting anger among their base.
Read the entire rebuttal at Reader Rebuttal (Nick Berardino) : The Register’s wrong on pensions.
“They’re interested in further .. inciting anger among their base.”
The only anger I see on this issue is coming from the left and there are many examples.
junior, that doesn’t change Berardino’s point.
Hackett – It WAS a threat by Berardino! That was the only way to read it.