by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Mayor Alvin Brown, in accepting the more than 300 recommendations from his 18 transition policy committees, said Monday that his first three goals were to present a balanced budget to City Council, which he did, and then work on reorganization of City government and pension reform.
One of his transition committees reviewed pensions and, along with the legal and personnel committees, presented its final report Monday.
The Daily Record reported summaries of the other 15 committees on Monday.
The “Pension Transition Committee Report” opened with a statement that it was reporting its findings “with a strong sense of urgency.”
If left unchecked, it said, “our pension costs would grow from $118 million this fiscal year to more than $180 million by 2016.”
“Without a substantial increase in city revenues (greater than 35 percent in the next four years),” it said, “the City of Jacksonville could be forced to reduce all other city services by 10 percent to 25 percent to compensate for the growing pension obligation problem.”
The report makes several recommendations, including a study of best practices among other pension plans in the state.
The fact-filled report notes that the “vast majority” of City employees are not enrolled in Social Security through the City.
Tony Bates with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County asked Brown about the pension bill, and Brown responded that the workshop about pensions was taking place Monday afternoon.
“Clearly that will lead to pension reform,” he said.
Brown said he sought reform that was fair and sustainable and that would “not bankrupt the City.”
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Transition committees and major recommendations
The 18 transition policy committees developed recommendations for Mayor Alvin Brown. The first 15 were reported in the Daily Record on Monday. Here are the summaries of the remaining three.
Legal
The 4 summarized recommendations:
• Permit the Office of General Counsel to provide substantial input toward its budget allocations and needs.
• Retain the Office of General Counsel representation of all clients (even those with specialized needs) for legal needs common to all City entities.
• Require the Office of General Counsel to discuss with its lawyers the recognition of conflicts.
• Review and revise the fee structure and billing rates assigned to lawyers and clients with the Office of General Counsel such that the rates have a meaningful correlation to a budgetary need.
Pensions
The report offered both cost-saving strategies to reduce pension costs and revenue-intensive strategies aimed at enhancing revenues, totaling almost 20 suggestions. Here are the top 3 strategies from each.
• Cost savings: Freeze defined benefit pension plans in favor of defined contribution plans.
• Cost savings: Hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution “share plan.”
• Cost savings: Separate benefits tracks among different divisions of City government.
• Revenue intensive: Pension obligation bonds. The City must use its municipal bond credit rating to borrow funds for a designated period of time and interest rate.
• Revenue intensive: Pension stabilization fund. The purpose is similar to a “rainy-day” fund to fill the deficit gap during periods of negative investment market returns.
• Transfer City-owned real estate to the pension funds.
Personnel
The top 3 of the 13 short-term (first 100 days) recommendations. Mid-term and long-term recommendations also were made.
• Staff the administration in a cascading fashion, allowing the chiefs to hire direct staff and department directors, with directors involved in hiring their division chiefs, and chiefs involved in hiring their staff.
• Conduct a comprehensive review of compensation and benefits for all appointed positions to determine general salary range guidelines.
• Review all departments for possible restructuring or consolidation, with emphasis on enhancing productivity and efficiency.