Police, firefighters call pension changes unfair

Ohio police and firefighters will oppose changes to their pension plan approved Wednesday by the board overseeing the retirement system.

Union leaders call the plan to increase employees’ contribution to their retirement system while trimming retirees’ cost-of-living adjustment a "knee-jerk reaction."

"You can’t expect the workers to shoulder all the burden all the time," said Mark Sanders, president of the Ohio Association of Professional Fire Fighters.

"Our members have sacrificed in benefits and obviously with more contributions. Retirees are on fixed income, so any cuts are devastating."

Both Sanders and Mark Drum, secretary/legislative chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, said state lawmakers should allow sweeping pension-law changes that took effect earlier this year to work, which should restore the Police & Fire Pension Fund to fiscal health.

Safety officers already have given up $3.2 billion through additional contributions from their paychecks and cuts in their benefits that began taking effect on July 1, as well as agreeing to later retirement ages. The measure approved this week would add more than $500 million to that total.

"We propose the legislature does what they said they were going to do," Drum said.

But leaders of the Ohio Retirement Study Council say the earlier changes haven’t been enough to restore fiscal health to the Police & Fire Fund. Ohio law requires each retirement system to be able to pay off its obligations in a maximum of 30 years. The Police & Fire fund — after years of being at "infinity" — is now down to 47 years.

Reallocating almost $500 million in pension money from health care to retirement brings the figure down to 38 years. The Police & Fire board can make that change on its own.

But legislative approval is needed to carry out the remainder of the plan: Current police officers and firefighters would have to chip in an additional 1 percent of their pay a year earlier than planned. Retirees would lose 0.75 percent of their annual cost-of-living adjustments. And newly hired first responders would be assessed 13 percent of their paycheck into the retirement system; it’s 10.75 percent for current employees.

Drum said the new plan is especially unfair to retirees, who saw their health-care costs increase by more than 400 percent when those benefits were changed in 2006.

Sanders agreed, saying, "All this just starts to panic our retirees. It destabilizes the efforts we made...

"There’s no group that has a greater interest in the solvency of our pension plan than our members and retirees."

drowland@dispatch.com

Source: The Columbus Dispatch