We're in the ballot initiative wing of the California Political Causes Morgue. On the table, two public pension reform plans that died last week. Scalpel, please:

Poisoning. The official language issued last month by Attorney General Kamala Harris to describe the measures' tainted public opinion.

The AG picked "teachers, nurses, and peace officers" as public servants affected by the measures and implied that public employees and their families could not receive death and disability benefits.

Voters polled by California Pension Reform, the group that wrote both measures, said the descriptions were a huge turnoff. Newspapers around the state blasted Harris, but it was too late. Donors didn't want to back a loser.

Multiple cuts. Last year labor coalition Californians for Retirement Security hired strategist Steve Maviglio, who quickly started hacking away at what was then a wide-ranging debate about public pensions.

One side of Maviglio's PR blade sliced up academic studies, editorials or public commentary suggesting pensions can't be sustained or are unfair. He hammered opponents daily on Twitter, poked them in email blasts. DontScapeGoatUs.com chided pension reformers with goat horns Photoshopped to their heads.

The other edge of Maviglio's blade sliced through the wonkspeak of pension reform ("unfunded liabilities," "discount rate," "assumed returns") by humanizing the issue. He turned loose a "pension truth squad" of workers and retirees who talked about their public service and modest pensions.

Those thousand cuts probably didn't sway the masses, but Maviglio just wanted a handful of rich Republicans who might back pension reform to ask themselves: If the unions are willing to get into a knife fight over the vague notion of pension reform, what will they do to a ballot proposal?

Suffocation. Pension reformers had talked last year about lowering benefits for current employees to speed the savings for government. It's a risky idea. Conventional wisdom and legal precedent hold that downgrading pension promises violates state and federal law.

California Pension Reform eventually filed proposals to put future workers in 401(k)-style plans or "hybrid" retirement plans that blended smaller guaranteed pensions with a 401(k)- type piece. That detail reinforced pension reforms' glaring political weakness: Changing pensions today won't fully pay off for years.

Other ballot measures – such as one that would prohibit unions from automatically taking dues from members' paychecks for political purposes – offered a more immediate bang for donors' bucks. That sucked the financial oxygen out of the room for pension reform.

OK, close it up and clear the table. Word is that Gov. Jerry Brown's pension reform plan is flat-lining in the Legislature.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.

• Read more articles by Jon Ortiz