Forty days.
At that time, there will be a new mayor, 11 new City Council members and maybe the same old pension problem if headway isn’t made on the latest plan. The quick turnaround has Walt Bussells worried about progress already made.
“If it starts over again, it’s going to be years,” said the Police and Fire Pension Fund board chair.
Until pension reform passes, Bussells said, there couldn’t be pay raises for public safety members who “are being hurt financially” after several years without merit increases. The public safety organizations need a plan that will keep them competitive, board member Nat Glover remarked during Thursday’s fund board meeting.
Across the table was Bill Gulliford, the council member whose legislation would be a big start toward reform. Gulliford knows the issues all too well — he told the board he’d recently talked to a young fireman who “bent my ear” about those issues.
City Hall and the fund’s board agree on the benefits that would be established for new and current members.
It’s the length of the deal, inclusion of language of an illegal senior staff plan and amounts going toward paying down the plan’s $1.7 billion unfunded liability that need a meeting of the minds.
Gulliford and other council members wanted three years, the fund board voted 10. It’s seven in the new deal.
“Seven looks like a compromise,” said John Keane, pension fund administrator. That could work “if we get all the other things in place,” he said.
Another disagreement has been leaving in or taking out language on a senior staff pension plan.
Gulliford wants it out to potentially pursue legal action. Keane wants it to stay in like it originally was last summer.
“That’s got to be addressed somehow,” said Keane, one of three members of that plan. “We can’t say we’re going to solve all of our disagreements and then leave one of them out.”
And the last major hurdle involves the amount each side would pay toward unfunded liability. Gulliford’s plan has the city paying $5 million next year, with $5 million increases each year after until it caps at $20 million. There isn’t a defined funding source for the payments.
The fund would match it each year from an account that has about $80 million and would grow through interest. Additionally, about $10 million annually in chapter funds — insurance premiums employees pay to the state — would go in that account.
Both the city and fund would make payments for 12 years or until the plan hits the 80 percent funded mark.
Keane, though, said the original deal called for the fund to provide a lump sum of about $100 million toward unfunded liability, which he favors.
“We wouldn’t have enough money to keep going very long,” Keane said, referring to the length of payments in Gulliford’s amendment.
Still, Keane remains optimistic it can get done in the suddenly narrow window.
“We are going to work with everybody,” said Keane. “It’s a top priority.”
Bussells and several others said they appreciated Gulliford attending Thursday’s meeting — it showed that action was needed, a sentiment the board “could not agree more on,” Bussells later said.
And although he was concerned, he said he thinks it could be done by July 1.
“It can be done in 40 days,” said Bussells.
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