Two Atlanta City Council members on Monday will call for an emergency committee to tackle the crisis with the city’s pension funds, which are suffering more than $1 billion in uncovered liabilities.

Howard Shook, chairman of the city’s Finance and Executive Committee, and Claire Muller, who initially proposed the idea, jointly are putting forward a resolution establishing a select council committee to come up with recommendations by the end of the year. The move has the support of council President Lisa Borders.

“Pension reform, in my view, is our No. 1 priority, and that is saying a lot given all our other problems,” Shook said, referring to the city’s budget shortfalls and layoffs.

Muller’s move comes three weeks after the AJC reported that the council, with tacit approval from Mayor Shirley Franklin’s administration, made key decisions in recent years to sweeten pensions for city workers that have put Atlanta in a budgetary bind that will take years to escape. Pension funds that are funded 80 percent or more are considered healthy, national retirement benefit experts say. Atlanta’s general employees’ fund, the city’s largest, is only 52 percent funded. The two other funds are better off, but well below 80 percent funded. At least one-fifth of the city’s $570 million general fund this year is going to employee pensions, and it still hasn’t been enough to make a substantial dent in the unfunded liability.

In 2003, the city’s unfunded liability — the amount the city will ultimately have to pay to retirees — totaled $620.5 million. After the substantial increases in pension benefits for most city workers, that figure stands at $1.2 billion.

“It’s not going to go away,” Muller said.

Aides to Franklin are cool to the idea of the task force.

“The administration is focused on pension issues and fully intends to put forward reforms that will address outstanding issues and ensure that our pension obligations are reasonable and sustainable going forward,” Greg Giornelli, the mayor’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “I don’t envision us forming a task force. The issues are known and straightforward. We simply have to gather the full range of information and propose recommendations to council.

“We would expect to do all that this calendar year.”

Employees pay a portion of their salary to the pension, but the bulk of the money comes from the city. The money is then invested to grow the fund and cover retiree benefits.

Any shortfall between the cash on hand and the debts to retirees is unfunded liability that the city must pay.

“Ever since I’ve been on council, the liability has been huge,” Muller said.

In 2004, the city set up a similar task force that made a series of recommendations for the council to change how it handles pensions.

The council only adopted a few of them, such as extending the date by which the pensions must be fully funded from 2018 to 2024, to stretch out payments. However, other key changes were not implemented.

Shook said he wanted a select council committee, instead of past task forces made up of city officials and business leaders, because a council committee would have authority to act more quickly.

Tony Biello, a retired lieutenant and chairman of the police pension fund, said he wanted to work with the council to stabilize the pensions.

“I welcome anything they can do to deal with this problem,” he said. “The [pension] boards and the City Council have to work together to get these things where they need to be. …

“Is it going to take massive amounts of money to solve this problem? Yes.”

Kelen Evans, a fire lieutenant who heads the fire pension, said he fears the council might try to fill the pension gap by raising contribution rates for employees, effectively reducing their income.

“If they do that, this is not going to be the place for new firefighters,” he said. “They are going to want to go elsewhere.”