It’s been a long journey for Janet Cosper, and many of you have gone along for the unpleasant ride.
Cosper lost her husband a year ago last month to a heart attack just months before his planned retirement from the city of Marietta where he was the top building inspector. Although her husband, Hal Cosper, was fully vested in the city pension, Janet was startled to find the city had a policy withholding pension benefits to survivors of employees who die prior to retirement.
I've written several columns this year about her predicament, prompting many readers to express their outrage. Today, I'm happy to report Mayor Steve "Thunder" Tumlin and the City Council are moving toward a change in what many of you have rightly identified as a heartless and dangerous policy.
Janet Cosper has always emphasized her concern for current city employees and their families as she has pursued a change in the policy. Reached at her part-time job as a receptionist at a dental office, Janet said she was cautiously optimistic the council will act.
“I’m afraid to get my hopes up but it’s a huge step,” she said. “It’s such a far cry from where we were a year ago when everybody kept saying no.”
Marietta city leaders still have to travel the final mile, but their willingness to reexamine this provision is a testament to how a local news outlet like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution serves our community.
It’s my job to give people like Janet Cosper a voice, and to put tough questions to elected leaders who seem tone-deaf to how their policies and actions impact citizens like her.
I only wish every issue was as clear cut.
Put plainly, the policy is unfair. It’s so unfair that it is actually illegal for private businesses to offer a pension without including a benefit for the survivors of vested employees. Marietta is not a private business, but it is unheard of for a public pension to have such a cruel policy.
Janet tried for months to get the city to reconsider its policy of denying widowed spouses a survivor benefit. Not only was she concerned about her own financial picture, but she was worried about the spouses of the city’s other employees who could find themselves in a similar situation.
Don Horton, a retirement planner and Roswell City Council member, heard from a mutual friend about her plight and tried to reason with the city too, but to no avail. Only then did they come to the AJC.
At first, the city suggested Hal erred by not retiring earlier. Then city officials said they might change the policy, but would not make it retroactive.
Now, thanks to continued press and public pressure, city leaders are on the verge of making good on Hal’s service and getting themselves out of the tone-deaf dog house they created. It would appear this is largely attributed to the work Tumlin and Councilman Johnny Walker.
It was Tumlin who said at council meeting in March that he would support changing the plan.
“When something slaps us in the face, we ought to look at it,” Tumlin said during a City Council meeting in March. “It’s not ‘let them eat cake.’”
Those were the first and only public words Tumlin said on the subject until an email sent earlier this week. Tumlin said he had been operating in “silent mode” to protect the privacy of the Cospers, but he pointed out some progress.
Last week, the council’s Personnel Committee voted 2-1 to recommend to the full council an appeal process for the surviving spouse of city employees. The proposal comes with a boatload of conditions:
- The surviving spouse must have been married at least 10 years prior to the death of the city employee;
- Any "death benefits paid previously to (the) surviving spouse" are deducted from the annuity;
- Surviving spouses must appeal to the city pension board within two years of the death of the employee to access benefits;
- The pension board's decision to grant benefits to a surviving spouse is subject to City Council approval;
- The proposed policy is retroactive to employees who have died in the last five years.
As written, the policy likely would apply retroactively to Janet Cosper, but not to any other surviving spouse. Rosa Nutt, the wife of Lonnie Nutt, a Marietta firefighter who died of a heart attack on duty three years ago, likely could not appeal under this policy because she had not been married to Lonnie long enough.
According to Councilman Walker, a dozen other employees vested in the city’s pension program have died prior to retirement in the 29 years since the current pension policies were adopted, but it is unclear how many of those left behind survivors who could claim the benefits.
Should the council approve the policy at its meeting next Wednesday, Marietta will have closed a dangerous loophole for its current pension-eligible employees. Right now if a 55-year-old police officer with 25 years on the force were to be killed responding to a call, he or she would leave no pension to their surviving spouse.
Changing the policy means the city would come closer to joining the rest of the country. Denying benefits to survivors of vested employees is unheard of in government pension and flat out illegal under federal law for private employees. Tumlin, a lawyer in private life, has publicly said his own firm could never have a policy like this for its own employees.
Much of the credit for moving the issue goes to Walker, a recent addition to the City Council. Walker serves as chair of the council’s Personnel Committee and is the council’s new appointee to the Pension Board, making him an important bridge between those two bodies.
Like Cosper, Walker is uncertain, but hopeful.
“I just hope that my fellow councilman will see that we need to do the right thing and get this changed,” he said. “I hope they will see the good in this.”
