So the four council members on the pension board filed suit yesterday against the remaining pension board members in what amounts to a hostile
take-over of the fund so the city can ultimately confiscate retirement accounts and
garnish pensions for money already earned and paid by first responders.
Lots of finger pointing in that 41-page lawsuit at just
about every body but the council members, former mayors and current mayor.
Never mind that the city created the plan.
Never mind that the city council always had oversight over
the plan.
Never mind that the city (according to the lawsuit) doesn’t
want to do one thing to “to sacrifice paved streets, affordable housing, public
safety, parks, and other necessities…” Oh, but they supposedly love their first
responders and find the need to protect them from themselves.
Never mind that former Mayor
Laura Miller’s lawyer/husband filed the lawsuit.
Never mind that the city promised those four council members that they would indemnify them to protect them from lawsuits expected and already filed by first responders who have been unjustly victimized by the city.
Oh what deep pockets these
mayors have!
Over and over again the
lawsuit holds the city blameless and claims the court needs to take over the
fund to ensure it’s managed property. And, ultimately, who better than the city of Dallas to do that?
Seriously?
Am I the only one who
remembers the city of Dallas couldn't even manage its role as dog catcher?
They had to call the police
to step in to save them.
Someone needs to stop this
madness.
#PoundOf Flesh #savethepension #backtheblue
2 comments:
Your assessment is precisely correct! The City appointed City Council members to the Police and Fire Pension Board from its inception. Since Council Members seldom attended Board meetings, the City has a great deal of responsibility for the Pension’s funding dilemma. Despite the Council Members dereliction, Mayor Rawlings contends that the City paid everything it was required to pay to the Police and Fire Pension Fund and has therefore met its full commitment. Mr. Mayor, police officers and firemen paid every dime they were required to pay as well! Some also paid with their lives, and the wives and children of these heroes deserve much greater consideration. City Officials have shamefully turned their backs on Police and Fire retirees and their beneficiaries.
It is important to note that the City of Dallas Civilian Employee’s Pension (non-sworn employees) also experienced funding shortfalls while their fund was entirely under the administration of the City of Dallas. This funding shortfall was resolved with Pension Obligation Bonds, but City Officials choose to resolve the Police and Fire Pension problems on the backs of the retirees by reducing their benefits and “clawing back” the interest they have earned on their honestly and openly earned benefits.
When the City of Dallas adopted the DROP Plan, it served its intended purpose of encouraging senior Officers to extend their employment. The City could have opted out of DROP five years after its inception, but chose not to do so because it was self-supporting and saved the City money. The DROP plan saved the City of Dallas a fortune in recruiting, hiring and training cost to replace the Officers who were typically retiring after 20-25 years.
Once in DROP, participants froze their pension benefits at 20-25 years of service but typically increased their tenure on the Police and Fire Departments an additional 5-15 years. With their earned pension benefits frozen at the time they joined DROP, the City only had to pay the pension benefit of a 20-25 year employee to a 30-35 year or even 40 year veteran for the rest of their lives, another huge savings for the City. But, none of this is taken into consideration in the City’s calculation of what the Dallas Police and Fire retirees supposedly owe the City for their “overly generous benefits”.
As their pension benefits were deposited in their DROP accounts, retirees accumulated wealth (as in a savings account). The interest paid to the DROP accounts was guaranteed between 8-10 percent. The percentage was calculated on the 3-year average return of the entire pension plan. DROP funds provided investment collateral to better diversify investments and increase the value of the Pension Fund. It increased the value of the Pension Fund or was impact neutral until 2008 when the economy made a sudden downturn. This is when the funding problems started.
Police and Firemen do not earn Social Security, but they voluntarily reduced their
benefits several times since 2008 and were told the amendments would resolve the funding problems. When the problem was not resolved they felt deceived, and the last amendment election failed to pass. It is important to note that retirees are not allowed to vote, only Police and fire employees serving actively can vote. Pensioners cannot vote and did not vote overly generous benefits for themselves as the Mayor contended. It is impossible for them to do that.
Mayor Rawlings and the City Council should level with the citizens of Dallas and stop treating Police and Fire retirees with disdain and dishonesty. Officers are leaving the Police Department in unprecedented numbers and the Department is seriously undermanned. Who would have an interest in employment with the City of Dallas where promises are made but subject to default? City management be aware that your actions are going to have serious consequences for the City of Dallas.
It is long past the time for the various labor associations to hire public relations experts and take out print, radio, and TV ads explaining the whole story. I believe that the younger members have been pitted against the DROPers intentionally by the Mayor and his minions on the pension board from the city council to engineer an expedited implosion of our pension plan. As well I believe that the run on the DROP was orchestrated by the mayor and his minions manipulating the new anti-DROP police and fire trustees into putting forward amendments guaranteed to create a run on the DROP funds for which they were led to believe they were prepared.
Mistakes were made across the board yet we have allowed ourselves to be painted as greedy police and firemen who created this crisis when the city is at least equally culpable. We are falling victim to being just another defined benefit plan who fell in the cross-hairs of the moneyed interests such as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. It is nauseating that a former ENRON executive who escaped the collapse of ENRON with his money and parlayed it into billions is now the point man of the establishment to destroy all of the defined benefit public pension plans.
ENRON's collapse is the textbook example of the destruction of private pension defined benefit plans. Somehow we have allowed ourselves to be targeted by one of the architects of that fiasco who seeks nothing less than destroying our defined benefit plan an replacing it with a defined contribution plan. This in the hope our assets can exploited by the wall street establishment which places our assets much more accessible to manipulation by those interests.
Tracy Landess DFD
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