Time to pay attention

An editorial
©St. Petersburg Times, published April 8, 1996

Second of three editorials

One sure way to lull a legislator to sleep is to start talking about police and firefighter pensions. "Most people's eyes just glaze over when you're talking to them," said Carol Marchner, legislative lobbyist for the Florida League of Cities.

Pension legislation can be complex, the issues arcane and the impact often limited to one city. They are political black holes that the state's public safety unions are only too happy to fill, playing on the compassion that politicians feel for the people who risk their lives each day. No legislator wants to be accused of voting against cops and firefighters, even if he doesn't understand what he's voting for.

The result is extraordinarily generous pension plans that cost taxpayers untold millions of dollars a year. The costs escalate each year as pension benefits expand. "The whole system has been nickle-and-dimed," Marchner explained. "It's a little here and a little there." This legislative session is no different.

Two major bills that would add millions of dollars of costs to local taxpayers - at least $3-million in St. Petersburg's case alone - are speeding through House and Senate committees virtually unscathed. One would prevent cities from requiring injured police and firefighters to take other public jobs instead of disability retirement. The other would require cities to pay for health insurance for certain categories of disabled police and firefighters. No one seems to have even a rough guess of the cost of the health insurance bill, but that hasn't stopped it from rolling forward.

The bills have not gotten the rigorous scrutiny they deserve. The Florida League of Cities is opposed to both measures, but even some of the bills' sponsors acknowledge they know little about their financial implications.

"Nobody's complained to me," said state Sen. John Grant, R-Carrollwood, a co-sponsor of the health insurance bill. "I can't remember that anyone from the League of Cities or anyone has darkened our door."

The unions, on the other hand, form a mighty lobbying force that can throw hundreds of uniformed members into legislative corridors and millions of dollars into political campaigns. Between 1994 and 1996, 31 police unions in Florida poured $3-million into political coffers. In Tampa, city employees formed the second largest bloc of contributors to Mayor Dick Greco's campaign last year, and 70 percent of them were police and firefighters, according to a Times analysis.

City officials who wind up paying the bills complain that the unions run to Tallahassee whenever they want something the cities won't give. The tactic has worked. Over the years, the unions have persuaded the Legislature to include a long list of medical conditions that are presumed to be job-related. Heart attacks, hypertension, angina, meningococcal meningitis and hepatitis are maladies now presumed to be job-related. So far, the unions have failed to get lung cancer and AIDS added to the list - but they're still trying. The lung cancer bill was rejected by a House committee by a 7-5 vote.

It's time the Legislature started paying closer attention. State Rep. Rob Wallace, R-Tampa, is the only legislator to vote against either of the two bills the unions are pushing. He's a freshman, though, and may not yet be aware of legislative tradition. He said he thought some of the provisions were too generous and others amounted to unfunded mandates. He's right on both counts.

The Legislature should devote the next year to studying the mess it has helped create and take steps to clean it up. A similar approach helped fix workers' compensation laws, which were crippling private businesses.

The unions that have helped fund political campaigns would oppose such scrutiny, but the taxpayers who have to foot the bill ought to demand it. Tomorrow: Can shame prompt change?