By Darrell Roberts, President of the California Professional Firefighters
I’ve spent my career running toward danger. Car crashes. Structure fires. Medical emergencies where seconds decide whether a family goes home together. That’s the job, and I signed up for it knowing exactly what it would ask of me physically and emotionally.
What I didn’t sign up for is wondering whether the state will find a new way to tax the retirement I’m earning one shift at a time. We deserve certainty when it comes to our savings – that’s why I’m voting yes on Proposition 42.
Right now, nothing in California’s Constitution stops politicians from taxing the money Californians like me have spent a lifetime saving. Our retirement account, our savings, our personal property are all fair game. Prop 42 changes that. It writes a clear protection into the Constitution so the money we set aside for our future is protected.
Firefighting takes a toll that doesn’t show up on a paycheck. The average firefighter’s career is shorter than most professions, worn down by smoke exposure, injury, and the physical demands of the job itself. Study after study has linked firefighting to elevated cancer risk and cardiovascular disease. We accept that trade-off because the work matters. In exchange, we’ve been promised that the retirement system we pay into throughout our careers will actually be there when we need it, without the state deciding to tax that retirement after the fact.
That promise is under threat. California lawmakers have introduced proposals at least five separate times in recent years to tax personal savings and retirement assets. None have passed yet, but the pattern speaks for itself, especially as the cost of living in this state keeps climbing and more of us are counting on retirement savings. This isn’t an abstract policy debate: a typical California firefighter could face up to quarter-million dollars in lifetime taxes on savings they’ve already earned. That’s real money taken from a retirement built shift by shift, often at the expense of time with our own families, in a state where every dollar already has to stretch further than it used to.
What makes this especially hard to swallow is that these would be new taxes on money that’s already been taxed once – income we earned and set aside specifically so it would be there when our firefighting careers come to an end. Taxing it again doesn’t just cost us money. It sends a message that decades of service and sacrifice can still be renegotiated by politicians in Sacramento long after the fact.
That’s why California Professional Firefighters joined a broad coalition supporting Proposition 42, the Retirement & Personal Savings Protection Act, this November. It covers pensions too, and it blocks retroactive taxes, so no future Legislature can reach back and change the deal.
We’re joined in this fight by the Peace Officers Research Association of California, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the State Building and Construction Trades Council, small business owners, veterans, and seniors. We agree firefighters, cops, and everyday Californians shouldn’t have to guess whether their retirement will still be theirs when they finally get to use it.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the retirement I’m earning through this work stays mine. Many of my brothers and sisters in the fire service feel the same way. We’ve already given the state everything we have on the job. Prop 42 simply guarantees that the retirement savings we’ve earned stay protected. That’s not a special favor. It’s the bare minimum we’re owed.
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