The 868 pensioners and survivors drawing benefits from Minneapolis' old police pension fund might want to thank officers Bruce Johnson, Mike Roberts and Terry Moses.
The three officers combined worked just more than 400 hours of overtime in the month after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse.
That's turned into a $780,000 windfall for pensioners under the formula for calculating pensions. But it's a $780,000 headache for city taxpayers.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied the city's claim that the ripple effect of the trio's overtime on police pensions should be included in reimbursements for bridge collapse costs.
So that means the pension burden will fall on city property taxpayers, barring a successful further appeal.
The pension cost represents the greatest share of the more than $900,000 in city claims still unreimbursed by the feds. The city also was denied reimbursement of $149,000 it paid St. Paul for its collapse response. It has been reimbursed nearly $3 million, but it claimed $3.9 million in collapse-related expenses.
The pension claim arises from the peculiarities of the Minneapolis Police Relief Association, which stopped taking new members in 1980. Newer officers belong to a statewide police and fire pension plan. The old pension plan bases pension amounts on the total compensation of a top-grade patrol officer. That incudes base wages, plus a variety of fringe benefits including clothing and equipment allowance, vacation and sick leave payout, health club allowance and shift differential. One of those factors is overtime earnings, figured on a rolling average.
Because the fund had only 14 working members as of this month, and a number of them are in higher ranks than officer, the impact of overtime earned by the three officers ripples through the checks of pensioners. The overtime earned by most officers who responded to the collapse and belong to the statewide fund doesn't affect the city budget in the same way.
