San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed may be remembered as an accidental pension reformer. It wasn’t the issue he claims to have sought to tackle when getting into government, but Measure B’s success and its long-term impacts will certainly define his time as the mayor of the nation’s 10th largest city.

The media coverage of the steps taken in San Jose has been extensive and high profile. News outlets like the New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, and USA Today have all run stories about the reforms. That, along with the size of San Jose and the scope of the pension reforms, has also brought the attention of Mayor Reed’s colleagues.

With the coverage, however, has come controversy. For cities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, Reed has become analogous to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Representatives of the city’s employee unions have called Measure B a renege of promises made to the city’s retirees. They claim it was illegal, and are already mounting legal challenges.

From the Mercury News:

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s phone has been ringing a lot lately: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Fox, Vanity Fair and mayors from Los Angeles to Louisville.

Reed ran for mayor in 2006 with an unremarkable budget-balancing agenda for a city perhaps best known in song as a place you might not know the way to, even if it is the nation’s 10th largest.

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