San Jose voters’ almost 70-percent approval June 5 of Mayor Chuck Reed’s pension reform Measure B weighed on the consciences of City Council members who have been sharply divided over how to deal with a retirement bill that’s more than tripled in a decade.

A month ago Reed couldn’t muster the council votes to impose reduced pensions on new civilian city hires — a move voters endorsed by a 70-percent-plus margin in 2010’s Measure W — and a cheaper health plan to ease soaring retiree health costs.

When that same proposal came before the council last week, it passed with only one councilman, Kansen Chu, opposed. Like Chu, Councilmen Ash Kalra and Xavier Campos, also allies of the city employee unions that have bankrolled their campaigns, repeated their arguments that it will hurt retirees, etc.

“It’s not a good day today,” Campos said at the meeting.

But this time Kalra and Campos voted to do it anyway. Say what?

Kalra, who narrowly beat a re-election challenger, told us later that he didn’t want to hand his political foes a brush to paint him as an obstacle to pension reform.

“I’m not part of the mayor’s political narrative — that I’m opposed to all pension reform,” Kalra said.

We tried to get an explanation from Campos too but his staff kept telling us he wasn’t available.

The pension issue also drew some choice sniping last week among council members Pierluigi Oliverio, Don Rocha and Nancy Pyle. All three voted to put Measure B before voters, but Pyle and Rocha were among those who voted against reducing new-hire pensions last month, arguing they should wait until Measure B is decided.

Before last week’s council vote, Oliverio unloaded on Rocha and Pyle in his weekly blog, saying they should win Oscars for acting like pension reformers. Oliverio no doubt felt a bit burned that Pyle and Rocha had endorsed the union-backed, anti-Measure B re-election challenger he stomped on June 5. But Pyle let Oliverio know she didn’t appreciate the blog.

“Criticizing or lecturing each other in the press or on blogs,” she said at the meeting, “is, I feel, inappropriate and beneath the dignity of our office.”

New family courthouse wins reprieve for now

At least for now, Santa Clara County’s judges may have dodged a budget bullet that could have doomed funding for a long-sought new family courthouse in downtown San Jose.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Richard Loftus and court administrators have been scrambling to salvage the $242 million project since last month. That’s when Gov. Jerry Brown’s May budget revise included a dose of bad news: the Santa Clara County courthouse had been lumped in with dozens of other new projects around the state that were being put on hold to help patch the judiciary’s yawning budget gap.

Given the state’s precarious financial situation, Santa Clara’s judges say their worst fear is that any delay in the project could eventually spell its doom. In other words, once on hold, forever on hold.

So Loftus, who burned the phone lines to South Bay state legislators to get the courthouse back on the go list, let out a big sigh of relief when the state finance department agreed to add the project back on Tuesday. With the budget not yet a done deal, Loftus says, “The Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet.”

But he’s now hopeful the next stage is approved, and by next spring the court will be able to sell bonds for the crucial construction stage. That would send the proposed 20-courtroom facility on Market Street into the reality stage.

When traffic’s the issue, is candidates’ faith relevant?

If the underlying issue did not touch simmering rivalries, the recent episode in the District 10 San Jose City Council race might merit a shrug. Alas, it wasn’t funny. An online report from the weekly Metro, which ran on www.sanjoseinside.com after the June 5 primary, began by saying: “A Jew and a Palestinian will face off against each other for San Jose’s District 10 council seat in November.”

The Jew is TV announcer Robert Braunstein, and the Palestinian is businessman Johnny Khamis (Khamis is a Christian born in Lebanon of Palestinian descent). Both are very much American, and neither man has made ethnicity or religion a part of his campaign. (Braunstein is a Democrat and Khamis a Republican, but both endorsed Mayor Chuck Reed’s Measure B pension reforms, the central issue in the June primary).

In a tolerant place like San Jose, the Metro reference struck many readers as off-key at best. After all, the big stuff in Almaden Valley usually has to do with land use or traffic. Braunstein suggested that he and Khamis write a joint letter to Metro saying the description was irrelevant to voters. But they couldn’t agree on the language. Among other things, Khamis wanted to add a phrase saying that the Metro article “verged on racism.” The Braunstein camp wasn’t ready to buy that. (Metro endorsed Braunstein). The upshot? The two candidates are writing individual letters. Metro changed the story online to state: “Robert Braunstein and Johnny Khamis will face off against each other for San Jose’s District 10 council seat in November.”

Metro Editor Dan Pulcrano said “we don’t have any racial bias.”

“They’re saying that we’re trying to inject religion into this race,” he said. “That’s not the case. We think it’s cool that a Jew and a Palestinian are running.”

Lofgren meets with ‘Godfather’ investor

IA was people-watching last week at Menlo Park’s Rosewood Hotel, the Sand Hill Road swank palace that’s become the place for venture capitalists to see and be seen. Out on the balcony we spotted U.S. Rep Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, sharing a table with Ron Conway, the so-called “Godfather of Silicon Valley” who’s the tech industry’s most powerful and influential angel investor.

Conway’s had his hands (and his dollars) in just about every significant startup of the past 15 years, from Napster to Facebook to airbnb. IA wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t get to the bottom of what he and Lofgren were discussing so intently.

The high-powered duo said they were talking about both tech and immigration policy. The latter is considered Lofgren’s strong suit, and the valley’s tech types long have been interested in it, particularly as the industry becomes more global.

As for the former, many in Silicon Valley have murmured for years that our Congressional delegation isn’t as aggressive as others about promoting the tech agenda on Capital Hill. So to the extent Lofgren was picking Conway’s brain, that can’t help but be good news around here.

Internal Affairs is an offbeat look at state and local politics. This week’s items were written by Tracy Seipel, Howard Mintz, Scott Herhold and Peter Delevett. Send tips to internalaffairs@mercurynews.com, or call 408-975-9346.