Fort Worth police proposal won't solve pension problems

Fort Worth City Council members now have all the information they need to make tough decisions about the pension plan for police and general city employees.

That information is definitive: With votes scheduled for Tuesday, the council should reject the police offer for higher employee contributions to the pension fund. It won't rescue the pension plan from its deep financial hole.

The council should adopt City Manager Tom Higgins' proposed changes in the plan's formula for calculating individual pensions. The change would leave earned benefits intact while reducing benefits based on future service.

Finally, someone at the Fort Worth Police Officers Association should grow up. A posting on the association's Facebook page said the proposed pension changes tell officers: "Do not risk your life to save citizens' lives."

Police know that risk is part of their job. Their training teaches them to minimize risk, but it can't be eliminated. The rest of us are thankful that dedicated people are still drawn to the profession. The "Do not risk your life" comment is an incredibly childish insult to their dedication.

Nobody likes seeing any city employee's benefits reduced. But the cost of the pension plan has soared out of control to the point that its viability is in danger. Put simply, the plan can't meet its future obligations.

The cost to taxpayers is out of hand. Assistant City Manager Susan Alanis told the council Tuesday that the city's contributions to the plan nearly doubled between 2007 and 2010, adding more than $35 million in costs to the annual city budget.

Even with those increased contributions, the city has said, the pension fund's estimated unfunded liability -- the amount it must pay to current and future retirees beyond the amount it's expected to have on hand -- is $748 million under the current benefit formula.

But even that number comes from an unrealistic assumption that the fund will earn an 8.25 percent return on its investments. Reducing that to a more realistic 7.5 percent would increase the unfunded liability to $964 million.

The city manager's proposed changes in the pension formula introduce their own initial uncertainties even as they stabilize the fund's long-term outlook. Still, it's important to note that actuaries hired independently by the city and the police officers association have agreed on the estimated impact.

The analysis Alanis presented to the council Tuesday said the city's proposal, under a 7.5 percent assumed investment return, produces an unfunded liability of $1.2 billion with an actuarial amortization period of 50.3 years.

Even that's not an achievement to brag about. But the police proposal carries an accrued unfunded liability of $1.3 billion that the actuarial estimates say will never be paid off.

Police association President Steve Hall has said the council should reject the proposed changes or delay its vote while "all of us sit down like adults and work out a solution to the problem."

The city staff and police association representatives have been sitting down and talking about the problem for a year and a half. Alanis told the council that the association has not responded to some of the city's requests for information and simply refused to discuss some issues.

Hall has also suggested rolling the pension issue into negotiations on a new police "meet and confer" contract. That's a formula for more delay, obfuscation and confusion.

Fort Worth police and taxpayers deserve an affordable, transparent and predictable pension plan that treats all city employees equitably. The council should vote Tuesday to accept the city manager's proposed pension formula changes.

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