It was pension reform, but not quite.
Opposing voices, but not many.
At the end, it was progress.
City Council by a 16-3 vote approved what amounted to two-thirds of comprehensive pension reform, passing along a deal it was presented and decided to change. Council members Kimberly Daniels, Denise Lee and Robin Lumb were the three members in opposition.
It took weeks this summer for Mayor Alvin Brown and Police and Fire Pension Fund administrator John Keane to agree to terms. Since October, it’s been council’s turn — with warnings that changes could mean rejection by the fund’s board.
Still, some key tweaks were made in recent weeks. Changes to cost-of-living adjustments and the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, both non-starters in those talks between Keane and Brown, have been made. Council kept its right to impose benefits should it need to over the next 10 years, the length of the majority of this pension deal.
Yes, governance and benefit changes were made, but it was what wasn’t done that drew the criticism from those who opposed the deal.
Lumb said he couldn’t vote for the agreement, calling it a “cardboard cutout,” without a funding source to help pay down the city’s $1.65 billion deficit in the plan’s unfunded liability. Additionally, he said while benefits might have been too rich, “nobody bothered to fund it properly.”
Lee said while she respected the work by her peers, the issue still isn’t resolved because council hasn’t been presented a plan by Brown on the funding source. She called the latest funding idea, which has the city and JEA both borrowing $120 million, “disturbing last-minute dialogue.”
Without that funding source, she said she felt it was a “half bill, not a whole bill.”
They were in the minority, though, and several members agreed the funding source would be the next step if pension reform actually was to happen. This deal doesn’t go into effect until that’s resolved.
The deal now moves to the fund’s board for approval. Members will talk about it this morning at a special meeting.
Union leaders Randy Wyse and Steve Amos don’t have votes on that board, but both said their members have shown concern about the changes.
Amos, president of Fraternal Order of Police, said he expects the fund board to represent all of the public safety members with their decision. Wyse, president of the Jacksonville Association of Firefighters, had similar comments.
Wyse also said the council “ignored the sacrifices” public safety officials had made in the past, a point Undersheriff Dwain Senterfitt expanded upon after the vote. Addressing council members as a private citizen, he listed off names of several officers shot in the line of duty since 2001 and talked about salary discrepancies between the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and other municipal police forces.
“Don’t tell me they haven’t sacrificed,” he said.
Although changed from what he initially filed, Brown said after the vote he was optimistic the fund board would accept the changes, calling it a “tremendous opportunity” for the city.
Council President Clay Yarborough noted that any deal making it this far was progress, having gone farther than any pension deal in recent memory.
Yarborough has simple advice for the five-member pension board.
“Vote yes,” he said. “Vote yes.”
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