City wishes to break promise to pensioners

We normally do not believe it is appropriate to comment on ongoing litigation, but a Oct. 20 commentary by two Minneapolis City Council members ("Minneapolis vs. pensions: An accounting") regarding the ongoing lawsuit between the city and our pension funds failed to disclose important facts.

The Minneapolis Police Relief Association (MPRA) and the Minneapolis Firefighters' Relief Association (MFRA) are the two oldest public pension funds in the state. The pensions of our retirees and widows are directly tied to the salaries of active police and firefighters. The only way pension benefits go up is if active police and firefighters negotiate a raise. That can only happen if the City Council and mayor approve the raises. It was a bargain struck decades ago and one that has been honored ever since.

The city's police and fire pensions are modest, about on par with the statewide average of police and fire pension plans. Our members receive no Social Security from working for the city of Minneapolis. All they get is the pension that the city promised them. Our raises approximate what Social Security increases have been. The pensions are decent and can meet our members' needs, but just barely. After a lifetime of service risking our lives daily, it is a fair bargain.

• The pension funds' membership adopted a bylaw to provide a mechanism to add new items of compensation based on collective bargaining. The City Council ratified the bylaw amendment. Now the city is trying to rewrite the agreement.

In the current lawsuit, the judge has ruled that our pension funds complied with the 1995 Settlement Agreement. The main item in dispute was the issue of how to treat "new items of compensation."

Contrary to the claims of Council Members Paul Ostrow and Betsy Hodges, the judge did not rule that the benefits are excessive. Rather, she simply ruled that the process used to adopt periodic increases needed to be resubmitted to the city for additional bylaw changes, even though the 1995 Settlement Agreement and the bylaw that was adopted at that time gave that authority to the MPRA and MFRA alone.

The judge also has never made a ruling that the funds overpaid benefits by $50 million. That is simply not true, and that is why the city should not be commenting on matters pending before a judge. In fact, it is an outrage for the city to abuse the legal system in this way.

For more than a decade, the relief associations added new items of compensation to the definition of salary. The only way it is possible to add a new item of compensation is if active police and firefighters receive a raise. That can only happen when the police and fire unions, the City Council and the mayor agree to increases at the bargaining table.

Every year, representatives of the pension funds would sit down with representatives of the city, fully disclose those items of compensation, agree on the amount of those items, prepare an actuarial report, and submit the budget levy request to the City Council. Each and every year since 1995, the Minneapolis City Council has approved the levy requests.

Still, the city is claiming that the pension funds erred, and its solution is to make retired cops, firefighters and their widows pay.

What we find unconscionable is for the Minneapolis City Council and Mayor R.T. Rybak to take us to court in an attempt to tear up a 14-year-old agreement and try to take up to $500 per month from retirees and hundreds a month from widows.

We have made multiple attempts to settle this issue. We proposed solutions that would have saved Minneapolis taxpayers millions and reduced our tax levies. The city refused. We have believed throughout this matter that we have acted in accordance with our agreement, and the city should do the same.

Walter C. Schirmer is executive secretary of MFRA. Larry Ward is president of MPRA.