A private attorney for the city of San Diego's pension fund was shocked when he found out about a plan to boost retirement benefits for a labor union president, and he said that alone could squelch the 2002 deal with the city to continue underfunding the pension system. An in-house lawyer for the retirement system recounted the San Francisco attorney's reaction to the special perk for the union official in an e-mail two years ago. "This, obviously, is huge," Sheila Leone, the in-house lawyer, wrote of the attorney's reaction on March 24, 2003. Leone said the attorney, Robert Blum, told...