The Police and Fire Pension Fund board doesn’t agree with a recent ruling that strikes down the so-called “30-year agreement.” It’s not appealing — not yet, at least — but the board is making it known through a rehearing and clarification motion filed Friday.
A rehearing is a second consideration to bring the court’s attention to any error, omission or oversight that might have been committed the first time. The board believes that’s the case in Circuit Judge Thomas Beverly’s ruling on several fronts of the Sunshine Law case.
Among them, that the court has misconstrued the evidence, or lack thereof, to assume some facts were undisputed — such as negotiations between the city and fund weren’t done in public.
In the fund’s motion, it said the plaintiffs — Curtis Lee and the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County — didn’t place admissible evidence about communications, transactions, meetings or anything between the city and fund board before 2009. “Broad presumptions on the events occurring before 2009 are patent speculation,” the motion reads.
Beverly’s ruling said the 30-year agreement is void ab ignitio — or not valid from the start — because behind-closed-door meetings were what led to the original contract in 2001.
The lawsuit was filed 10 years later in response to former Mayor John Peyton’s pension deal that was withdrawn before City Council considered it.
The motion goes on to say the fund maintains meetings between the fund and city that led to the Peyton deal were informational and not decision-making.
“There is substantial and competent evidence proving the parties were essentially meeting to determine the proper actuarial assumptions to change terms of the Restated Agreement to alleviate costs to the City, not to bargain pension benefits,” the motion states.
Beverly’s ruling also discusses collective bargaining and what construes it, but the fund’s motion claims the Public Employees Relations Committee has jurisdiction over that issue.
As for the clarification being sought, the fund wants the court to specify whether portions of the restated agreement addressing non-employee benefits also are invalid.
That agreement is divided into 11 sections, it states, with Beverly’s order finding the entire thing void because of one section.
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