> That's likely true in large cities, but most cities (and thus most city governments) aren't large.

Many small city elected officials are part-time, often unpaid or with a largely symbolic stipend: they don't have public pensions from those positions at all. So they are even less subject to “if you make bad pension decisions, we’ll take your personal pension away” leverage than fulltime big-city and state politicians, who are likely to have (but not depend on) public pensions.