Atlanta Forward / Another View: No need to break pension promises

By Jim Daws

To retain and attract qualified employees, in 2001 and 2005, Atlanta passed pension improvements that aligned its benefits with surrounding municipalities. Around that time, investments that help fund pensions began to stagnate and ultimately tanked.

In 2009, mayoral candidate Kasim Reed used to great effect misconceptions that the changes had ballooned city pension costs. But the recent report by a pension review panel confirmed what labor leaders have argued all along — that Atlanta’s pension plans, after the changes, are average when compared to surrounding governments, and that the amount of the unfunded pension obligation attributable to the changes is only about 15 percent.

Nevertheless, those events have served as a justification for scapegoating Atlanta’s employees and stripping away their constitutionally protected pension rights.

For more than a decade, Atlanta’s workers have been paid substantially less than market wages. Vested interest in retirement plans is all that kept many from leaving for higher pay in the suburbs. Remember, Atlanta doesn’t provide Social Security to its employees.

No other municipality in Georgia has unilaterally deprived current plan participants of vested pension rights and, if the City Council approves the mayor’s plan, employees will have no choice but to defend themselves in court.

These economically marginal workers, who pick up garbage, deliver water to homes, patrol streets and fight fires, do not deserve this treatment, which is unworthy of Atlanta’s legacy of economic justice.

Current pension shortfalls are a symptom, not a cause, of the structural underfunding that is Atlanta’s broken business model. Every workday, Atlanta’s taxpayers provide services to almost a million commuters who pay their property taxes in the suburbs. The state sales tax collected in the city is distributed disproportionately to suburban and rural areas.

The unsustainability of this condition results in Atlanta reeling from one budget crisis to the next.

About $20 million a year would be saved by the mayor’s proposals. There are better solutions that don’t require breaking modest retirement promises. They involve strategies for Atlanta’s non-resident workday population to help pay for services they use. A small tax or fee would lift the burden of recurring budget shortfalls off employees. That would make our city function properly once and for all.

Fire Capt. Jim Daws is president of the Atlanta chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters.