Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, best known for his quest to curb runaway public employee pension costs, is still at it after leaving City Hall and resuming work as a lawyer.

In an op-ed for the San Diego Union Tribune, Reed highlighted the plight of Loyalton, a town of fewer than 800 souls in northeastern California. Loyalton drew national interest thanks to a write-up in the New York Times highlighting its battle with the giant California Public Employees’ Retirement System over the prospect of cutting payments to its handful of pensioners.

Hit by hard times since its sawmill closed 15 years ago, Loyalton withdrew from CalPERS in 2013 after the last of its pensioners in the system retired. CalPERS then sent Loyalton a bill for $1.6 million to cover the retirees’ pensions, a figure that tops Loyalton’s entire annual budget. Loyalton officials were stunned, since they had dutifully paid CalPERS each year to fund the retirements.

But CalPERS — in a widely criticized practice — lowballs the annual cost of its pensions, using rosy assumptions that investment earnings some day will make up the difference. Yet when public agencies in the system look to cut ties, CalPERS sends a bill revealing how badly underfunded the plans have been. That in fact happened to San Jose when Reed was mayor — the council backed off of quitting CalPERS pensions for its elected leaders after being told the exit would cost $5.7 million to ensure benefits for about 30 officials.

With Loyalton unable to pay up, CalPERS last month declared the town in default, a move the state agency said would mean benefit reductions for Loyalton’s retirees. It’s being watched as a test of California’s tough protections of public employee pensions.

“Let Loyalton be a wake-up call,” Reed wrote in his article. “Public employees, retirees and residents will suffer unless there is significant and meaningful pension reform.”

Reed and other critics have drawn the wrath of unions by assailing generous public benefit formulas that let many career government workers retire in their 50s with six-figure lifetime payments. His San Jose Measure B in 2012 — replaced last month by a voter-approved settlement he supported — called for smaller pensions and higher retirement ages.

But Reed avoided any criticism of Loyalton’s retirees, whose pensions hardly seem generous and whose plight is just sad. The Times featured a 71-year-old former bookkeeper who expects to see her $48,000 annual pension cut to $19,000.

“All workers,” Reed wrote, “deserve safe and secure futures and shouldn’t be held responsible for poor decision-making by policy leaders.”

CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco took issue with Reed’s article, accusing him of holding “anti-pension beliefs” and failing to point out a “key element behind the Loyalton story: Local agencies such as the city of Loyalton determine the benefits for public employees, not CalPERS.”