Update to My Fellow Firefighters on Pension “Reform” Developments [HFRRF]
by David Keller
There’s been so much going on in Austin that it is hard for me to find a starting place. So let me start with you and I’ll ramble on from there.
I have never been so proud as a firefighter than on March 27 when hundreds of you showed up in Austin to testify on House Bill 43. Everyone was so polite, well informed and eloquent in their comments to the House Pensions Committee. It’s hard to imagine how the bill could ever have been reported favorably out of committee. You did your job and you did it well.
But now you know what we’ve been up against: a full-blown effort by the City to make firefighters fill a pension hole we didn’t dig. The City has been pursuing that course because we have money. We’re the best funded pension system in the state when compared to other plans with more than $1 billion in assets. The City has needed its ‘fix’ to come from somewhere. The City’s obligation to your pension is only 18{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the total owed to all three systems, but the City has been asking HFRRF to take on 35-40{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the total cuts. Again, the money had to come from somewhere. Talk about punishing success.
And that’s why I’ve been spending so much time in Austin, telling lawmakers your stories. It’s been hard because the truth has been twisted in so many ways. Take for example this baloney about our Board approving the City’s draconian cuts in October. Nothing is further from the truth. Our Board voted in October to continue discussions in hope of reaching mutually agreed upon legislative language. In every subsequent meeting those terms were altered or more were introduced. How do you agree in October to one thing and then get entirely differently terms in March? Well, that’s exactly what happens when you deal with the City.
Thankfully, with your help, we helped lawmakers understand this dynamic. The simple fact that Senator Huffman was working with us so diligently in the last two weeks on Senate Bill 2190, even while you were testifying in the House, reflected that at least one lawmaker understood what had happened. We hope you do also.
Today’s media barrage is more of the same. Lawmakers are being pressured by Moody’s saying that Houston bonds will be downgraded if a draconian bill with big cuts to firefighters’ pensions doesn’t pass. Baloney. Houston’s other two systems can fix their problems through the meet and confer process already available to the City. And the City doesn’t need a vote to issue $1 billion in pension obligation bonds those other systems want. They can do it tomorrow (kind of). We’ve stayed out of that mess because, again, we’re one of the best pension funds in Texas.
So where are we going? It will be more of the same for the near future. Back and forth to Austin. Back and forth with lawmakers. We remain OPPOSED to the two bills, SB 2190 and HB 43 because they put too much burden on you. We oppose them because this ballyhooed corridor mechanism is probably unconstitutional, taking control of actuarial assumptions away from our Board. We think that’s wrong and the Texas Constitution does as well.
Please keep contacting your representatives and your brother and sister firefighters in other parts of the state. We’re not going to let up on pressuring lawmakers to realize the City of Houston has all it needs to fix its problems without deep cuts to firefighters’ pensions. Be there with us.
Faithfully submitted,
David Keller
Chair
Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund
Board of Trustees
4225 Interwood North Parkway Houston, TX 77032-3866 281.372.5100 TEL 281.372.5101 FAX 1.800.666.9737 www.hfrrf.org
“So where are we going?” – To bankruptcy.
It is not a question of if, it is only a function of time.
As long as elected officials have the ability to make promises today, when they will be long gone when those promises are to be paid for, this is exactly what we can expect. This happens at every level of government all across the country.
The pensions for Texas teachers and employees are both in terrible shape and they are better than a significant number of other states.
How about Social Security and Medicare?
We need to start be honest with ourselves, then just possibly our elected officials will be honest with us.
I remember when in Texas a man’s word meant something. It seems those days are gone. We (elected officials) made promises to the employees of Houston, they should keep those promises.
But like our president and lt. Governor it is so much easier to go to court and file bankruptcy rather than to keep their promises.
“Write all the contracts you want. You can hire all the powerful attorneys you want to get you out of them,” Lane said. “But when you shake a man’s hand and look him in the eye — or a woman’s — you ought to keep your word.”
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article26869564.html
I guess I am old fashion and very seldom make promises because if I do promise something that promise will be kept.
I don’t perceive a promise from a politician as anything more than a lie until he actually does what he says. Lee Brown exposed his lie the first year he told it. Yet the folks being promised kept on supporting him. And White. And Parker And now Turner.
I didn’t make the promise and I didn’t lie. And I don’t let liberal democrat mayors speak for me. I take no ownership of the unfunded pensions. I paid what I was asked to pay when it was due.
It’s not a moral issue. It’s reality. The money wasn’t put in. The compounding at any rate never occurred. For 15 years this cake has been baking. It’s my choice not to partake.
That is what I say about Trump, he ain’t my president, we get to pick and choose.
Mr/Ms neither here nor there:
What part of the US Constitution do you not accept nor understand? Donald Trump won the election according to the provisions of the US Constitution. It is vital that we respect the Constitution, else we could lose it. Perhaps you would do well to rethink your statement that Trump “aint my president.”
Didn’t the mayor and city council also win the same way? Why do you get to pick and choose and I don’t? Is there a law some where that allows that?
Cee since you addressed that to me only, I would have to assume that you were okay with the statement I replied to.
I live in the United States and my family has fought for the country in all major wars so I have the right to an opinion.
Besides everyone knows that Trump won with the help of the Russians, he and his team were up to their eyeballs in it.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/15/source-claims-concrete-evidence-of-collusion-between-trump-russia/22041057/
The devil’s advocate in me would answer David’s original comment by pointing out that the other two pension systems took brutal cuts in the recent past and except for department heads, no municipal employees received the kind of raises HFD and HPD have in the last 20 years. Mayor Lanier instituted the DROP program instead of increasing direct pay for those public safety workers who had been with the city, paring down or eliminating the DROP program understandable given subsequent raises, at least for those that came after he left. Those with blinders that only look at narrow portions of the city budget might do well to understand that like it or not, you can’t wash your hands clean from the acts of your elected agents but realistically, Texas has a long history of self righteous types unwilling to pay the debts their agents incur, believing that since they did not vote for particular politicians, it magically frees them from any responsibility.
But don’t re-write history to blame the workers, HFD’s union backing Orlando Sanchez instead of Brown, and Deputy Chief Frank Herrera over Parker before supporting Benjamin Hall. The police picked Gene Locke over Parker too, had the GOP produced truly viable candidates in the past twenty years that supported public safety in spirit and not just as a means to grab votes, both groups would’ve considered such. When King’s biggest message was how he was going to cut compensation, that eliminated him from consideration and none of the candidates were trustworthy enough for wholehearted support. So cuts will happen, not be enough to completely fix the situation immediately, and additional cuts will be needed, it would just be nice if some of the RINO’s so worried about pensions would address their own luxurious benefits first and then apply truly conservative measures that did not target one or two pension systems as a form of political payback, perhaps requiring true balanced budgets each year of the cities so these problems would not get out of hand.
Not that it matters any but I think all benefit cuts should be for new employees only, maybe for those who are not vested as well, but doing nothing is not an option.
Peter, who are the board members of the pensions? (the people the pensioners elect to represent them)
who endorsed accepting the cuts to the payments to the pension funds? (the board members)
and finally, who represented the tax payers during all these negotiations? (no one)
I do agree with Mr. Keller here. His representatives did perform for their members and they should be able to keep what they have accumulated. The board members of the HPD and Muni employees should be held accountable for their decisions. Too bad their members didn’t think of that several years ago.
Something needs to be done for sure. But it needs to be done with the reality of the situation as it is, not as it was promised. It appears the HFD would withstand a Sarbanes-Oxley type scrutiny and be deemed viable. They could negotiate or accept higher contributions or whatever they can to maintain their viability.
The others should get the Kline-Miller routine and distribute what is available to those that are impacted and kill the dying programs. QED.
Dan, each board has city appointed members as well, the HFRRF board including a mayor’s representative, the city treasurer, a former city treasurer, and former councilman Carroll G. Robinson, while the police pension has Houston’s Chief Financial Officer & mayor’s appointee Don Sanders, and the municipal board has appointees from the mayor, a separate appointee from city council, a citizen appointee, and even an appointee of the elected city controller. What strikes me as amusing is the cross pollination on the boards, the fire pension’s executive director was the long time leader of the police fund and one of HFD’s former command staff sitting on the municipal board for years.
In terms of who represents the voters in negotiations with these boards, the two pensions under local control are represented by the mayor and mayor’s appointees just like every other city contract negotiation. Those who live in the city keep electing the same types of people to office yet expect different results but you can’t honestly claim voters have no representation whether your candidate was selected by voters or not. The other pension is controlled by itself with legislative oversight so maybe Governor Abbott’s recent call to limit local control should be made the law of the land. Conversely, a quick look at the election results from the official pension websites show that only a small fraction of eligible voters vote in their elections, HFD’s voting rate was 15{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and the other two showed similar numbers.
What it all boils down to is that the employees want all market risk borne by the city and the city wants to put more of the risk on the employees. Bill King recently blogged that additional employee contributions could not sustain current benefits without significant changes, the need to double or triple what employees pay to make up for market losses likely to be considered illegal as well as ill founded for employee retention. Without changes to all three systems, current pensions need a blank check to become 100{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} funded but no one is willing to pay that way any longer, each pension costing more every year to reflect the increases in benefits or market losses.
Reading this reminds me why I left Houston, no I wasn’t represented, no one allowed the voters to go to the polls and this is just one aspect of why a lot of citizens are moving out of Houston. For most of the 20 plus years I have lived in this area I have not worked at a job within the city of Houston but Houston continues to figure out ways to either incorporate areas who do not want to be part of this mess and blame it on well those people work in the city and take from it.
Welcome to reality, with this and other issues people who were not allowed to vote are voting with their feet. I have Houston City employees who live down from me and will not live back within the city limits again because they can see how bad it is going to get with what can best be described as back room deals that were misrepresented by the elected officials who made them. In the 7 years that I did live inside the city of Houston I got these services 1. no police response to a armed man trying to break into my house, twice; 2. a special ticket writing group who came into the neighborhood and wrote tickets like crazy for parking violations and when we took pictures proving that a lot of them were written incorrectly a special judge appointed by the Mayor refused to look at them; 3. A call to the Police on road rage and threats from a person on the Tollway, again no response but they contacted him and gave him my home information; 4. During Hurricane Ike our facilities were used to provide services to other areas, but we didn’t get any services inspite of being without power for over 13 days. Why because the neighborhoods we lived in didn’t vote the way that the City Council wanted and we made too much money.
So what did I get in return for paying taxes to the City of Houston for those years, a. no services; b. response that we were not paying enough and they needed more from us; c. in the case of a couple of elected officials some rather ugly comments about the fact that we were basically racist because we actually wanted services that we paid for.
I would recommend that Houston figure out a way to get their act together, because frankly if they screw it up and go into Bankruptcy you are not going to get a lot of sympathy from folks who have lived there and been screwed over by the city.
The last time any area was annexed Bob Lanier was the mayor, he left office in 1998.
I agree that the police do not often respond, but I pay county taxes as well so why can’t constables and deputies also be on the respond call?
Toll Road is county, talk to the county about that they are responsible for those lanes, not HPD.
Parking violations have Hearing Officers, everyone has the right to protest those tickets, so unless someone was looking for mass dismissals I find it hard to believe they would not allow the right to protest to individuals.
Curious what facilities did not allow you to use them, will you please be more specific.
The last community to be annexed was Kingwood and there were some problems there initially that happened during Bob Lanier’s tenure.
The City is very wasteful, I will definitely agree with that, the last truly fiscal conservative was Kathy Whitmire and the police and fire hated her.
Just a quick note from the office, when I owned property or lived inside the city limits, the police were quick to come when called. The only time they didn’t show up was when a neighbor had her car stolen and the police wanted to make the report over the phone. I’ve read about the city’s meter maids being demanded by some homeowner groups to address problems outside of downtown but out of all city services I’ve ever watched in action, the hearing officers for parking tickets were the nicest encountered. The one time I fought a parking ticket it was dismissed so that might color my perspective but he was cordial and asked for my side of events. And anyone claiming people are moving out of Houston should realize that the city has had net gains in population forever, the experts telling us that it will surpass Chicago any time now but more importantly, market prices of homes continue to go up so supply and demand tells me that more people are moving into the city than out of it.
If we get taxed out of our home, I, like you will simply leave my hometown.
btw, Houston’s population peeked in 2010 at 2,258 million. The latest count I’ve seen is for 2014 and was at 2.099 million. We’re just moving out slower than Chicagoans.
Dan, what is your source for the population count? The US Census Bureau figures as well as Houston’s official numbers show a different picture than the one you’re painting, all data at least a year behind but the latest federal numbers found at:
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/popcity6.html
and the city’s planning department estimates list 2,319,603 as of 1/1/17
http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Demographics/
Houston is not my hometown but I moved to the surrounding suburbs based in large part due to the stories told me by otherwise like minded friends. They claimed it was cheaper to live outside the city, how bankruptcy was imminent, and told me how much more house I could afford by moving close to 15 years ago. Imagine the sticker shock I felt when I found out the real costs of paying for all the services the county doesn’t provide, all the imaginary savings evaporating and then some, even the ISD no better than what my family left behind. The one similarity was how our heavily flawed tax appraisal system favors some interests over others, middle class tax payers picking up the tab too often in both settings. Frankly, my taxes would’ve been cheaper inside the city given the tax cap, that’s what I get for listening to advice from people over 65 years old that pay almost nothing in county taxes. I’ll light a candle in church for Senator Bettencourt to reform the way county tax appraisers come up with valuations but moving outside the city just to say I pay less in taxes when I end up paying more for the same services seems silly.
Lanier took Kingwood in the last ‘full purpose annexation’. In years since, many ‘limited purpose annexations’ have escaped notice, and will continue to escape notice until the time each converts to a full annexation. As is usual, by then the CoH apparatchiks and the MUD directors who engineered these quiet annexations will be long gone.
Yet the lege will not address annexation in any meaningful way.