Times Union: Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund finishes first step in reform process

[Patricia M. McBride]

Any planned reforms must include more city funds, the agency stresses.

Posted: January 19, 2011 - 7:35pm

By Timothy J. Gibbons

The Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund is almost ready to study some of the mayor’s pension reform plans, its board said Wednesday, but it stressed again that any changes it makes must include more money from the city.

The fund is waiting for information from the city about how it calculates savings if the changes are made, board Chairman Peter Sleiman said in a report to the board. Once it receives those answers, the fund will instruct its actuary to analyze some of Mayor John Peyton’s reform ideas.

Those include: raising the number of years of service for retirement, changing which years the pension is calculated on and dropping the accrual rate.

The report is the fourth issued by the fund since Peyton’s September proposal of changes that would apply to new members of the plan. 

Back then, the board agreed to “meaningful modifications,” and rapidly set up a special committee to explore Peyton’s plan.

“We’re pleased that they’re making forward progress,” said mayoral spokeswoman Kristen Beach, adding that pension reform was a “top priority” of the mayor. 

Peyton has said his proposal would save the city $700 million to $800 million over the next 35 years, with the bulk of savings going into effect when new employees retire.

In the past four months, the committee — which include all of the fund’s trustees — have surveyed a range of plans in municipalities across the state, examining how they compare to the pension received by Jacksonville’s police officers and firefighters.

Its findings: The plan’s benefits are in the mainstream compared to other public safety plans but its funding suffers from a higher-than-usual unfunded liability.

To deal with that, the fund is pushing the city to issue a bond that would cover part of the city’s contribution to the fund, contribute more on a regular basis and transfer unused property to the fund as well as institute the benefit-cutting measures.

“It all has to be done,” fund Executive Director John Keane said, referring to changes in both the inflow and outflow. “This is a comprehensive program.”

Although the fund’s latest report moves reform forward a bit, actual changes are a ways in the future.

The next step: Providing the fund with answers to a packet of questions that the fund says it submitted in August. With attachments and charts, the five questions took up about 20 pages.

The city has been working on answers since then, Beach said, and should have a final document by next week.

“They’re not simple questions or simple numbers,” she said.

After receiving the answers, the fund’s actuary will probably take about 60 days to analyze the proposals. Any changes must be approved by the state and the City Council and would only apply to employees hired after the process is completed.

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[Patricia M. McBride]

You know, just like with the US government, bonds sold have a finite number of years on them when the money plus interest must be returned (or interest is paid annually), so that is a problem, because Peyton is simply replacing debt with another type of debt.  How he thinks this will save us money, someone else will have to explain (but it is most certainly liberal logic and no one can doubt that this mayor and his predicessor Delaney were both flaming liberals costumed in republican party designations.  As far as the land goes, I have no idea and also wondered about that.  Maybe we could ask Mr. Gibbons who wrote the article as he didn't ask either apparently.  Or we could ask one of our councilmen or the mayor what property belonging to the city he plans to give the unions (at the rate they are going, they are going to own everything, including the homes we live in, anyway.

[Danny Kirkpatrick]

I have several question's on this, but for now only one jumped out so hard i got whiplash, I'll re-type the paragraph, " To deal with that, the fund is pushing the city ti issue a bond that would cover part of the city's contribution to the fund, contribute more on a regular basis and transfer unused property to the fund as well as institute the benefit-cutting measures." What jumped out was " unused property", what unused property are they talking about?