Readers respond to Times series on questionable
pension practices
By (letters)
©St. Petersburg Times, published April 13, 1996
Re: To serve and collect, March 31, April 1 and 2.
Congratulations to Brad Goldstein, Katherine Shaver and Thomas Tobin for
a fine, in-depth investigation into the fraud (stealing) going on in the ranks of
Tampa Bay's firefighters and police officers. I'm sure most citizens support
disability compensation for public-safety employees due to the risky nature of
their jobs. However, the contracts we have allowed the labor unions to negotiate
are downright execrable. This expose further reinforces the reality that labor
unions are a continuing detriment to America's ability to compete in the world
market.
The backs of middle-class taxpayers are nearly broken now. How much more
can we be expected to bear? I would suggest the next time a telemarketer calls
and identifies him/herself as your friendly local firefighter or a member of the
police benevolent association, respond with "My aching back" before slamming the
phone down. Then pick up a pen and drop a note to your state representative,
proclaiming your dissatisfaction with this unholy abuse.
Lil Cromer, Belleair
Congratulations on your front-page story (March 31) about the uniformed
city employees who have been routinely ripping off bay area taxpayers for
undeserved disability pensions.
What a refreshing change is this piece of investigative reporting. I was
beginning to wonder if you would ever come to your senses and cease featuring
mawkish tabloid stories (e.g., Three little words).
It would be quite a proud achievement, in the same class with crusading
newspapers of yesteryear, should you be able to pursue this disability scam to
the point of forcing a few of the amoral participants to pay back monies
undeserved - perhaps even precipitating criminal actions filed against them by an
embarrassed city government.
John G. Nash, Homosassa
Re: To serve and collect.
I am sickened by the abuses of the system run by the people who benefit
from it. I have been operated on twice on my left ankle, once on my left knee,
waiting for approval for surgery on my right knee from my HMO and have three bad
discs in my back from working in the carpet business for 25 years. I still have
to work to eat (bad habit). To Take and Cheat should be the name of this series.
These people should be taken to court for fraud.
Charles Callaghan, Belleair Beach.
I am outraged at the firefighters' rip-off of us taxpayers.
My husband was a volunteer firefighter for 12 years in Palos Heights, Ill.
- no pay, no pension. He and all volunteer firefighters put their lives on the
line every day.
They drilled once a week, took special training and state exams to become
emergency medical technicians, and additional training and exams to be
paramedics. Think of the number of volunteer firefighters in this country who
risk their lives to protect their neighbors and communities.
Is it any wonder that I'm outraged by this situation?
Josephine Adamski, Ozona
Re: To serve and collect, March 31.
Your first article in this series is right on target! Hopefully, as you
develop your theme, investigation by various agencies may ferret out the cheats
and save us honest folks a lot of money. Nevertheless, it is just the tip of the
iceberg. Identical cheating is obvious everywhere. Welfare, Social Security and
other areas that attract the no-gooders would only need moderate reform if there
were no cheating. The original systems were well-thought out and performed
satisfactorily until systematic cheating developed over the years.
We have become a country without conscience and our god is the almighty
dollar.
The bad among us should be punished and the good commended for their
efforts.
I commend you, St. Petersburg Times!
Chris T. Hensler, New Port Richey
Re: Pension fund run by good ol' boys, April 1.
You were too kind in you first paragraph on the handling of Tampa
Firefighters and Police Pension Fund. By my calculation it "lost" $50-million
dollars in 1995 by underperforming most other investment groups. The Tampa fund
only gained 20 percent while most groups gained over 30 percent in that year.
Most people I know did even better than 30 percent in 1995 with a mix of blue
chip stocks and bonds. The performance shortfall cost the Tampa group over
$50-million last year.
City tax auditor, Sharon Fox really scares me when she says the North
Carolina investment was a good deal. The city of Tampa had better look for better
judgment. A small pension fund has no business in such investments.
Police Lt. Robert Pennington's statement, "We are a multimillion dollar
corporation," shows an attitude problem. They aren't a corporation, they are
trustees. Pennington and the others should look up the definition.
Self-importance is not as good an attribute in a trustee as humility.
The fund should be split up in three pieces, with the trust department of
three large financial organizations handling the investment in only stocks and
bonds. Any of the three that underperformed the others would be replaced. The
fund then would not need a fancy building or to spend money to "educate" the
trustees. They would only need a rented office, a full time secretary and an
unpaid oversight board. The taxpayers and pensioners would be huge gainers.
Don Harrington, Clearwater
It is hard to conceive of anything more sickening and contemptible than
to read about police officers stealing from the very public they were sworn to
protect, through the rampant and fraudulent abuse and exploitation of disability
payments.
No, wait, I can think of something. How about politicians repaying the
corporate special interests that bought their last elections with a Polluters
Protection Act? Written by corporate lobbyists. Talk about sickening - in more
ways than one. And then they complain about the public becoming cynical!
Gene (E. C.) Ayres, St. Petersburg
After reading your excellent article about the firefighters and police
who draw enormous amounts of disability pay and then continue to work, I, for
one, will be hard-pressed to donate to their retirement, disability, etc., funds.
Recently I have been inundated by countless numbers of police and
firefighter organizations to contribute to their various funds. I have also been
asked to donate to other charitable organizations such as Save the Children
Foundation, Save the Whales, United Negro College Fund - the list goes on and on.
As much as I would like to donate to these worthy organizations, I cannot.
Through no wish or control of my own, my contributions are already being
made for me by the federal, state and local government. I am feeding starving
children in Africa; I am helping the Russian people buy western-style clothes; I
am helping the Mexican economy recover; I am helping to give food stamps,
welfare, Medicare and schooling to illegal aliens. I have also had my "donations"
help build a white elephant called the ThunderDome.
The point of all this is that I would like the government to invest my
"donations" in things that are more important to me - things like crime
prevention, better salaries for teachers, getting drugs off the street, taking
care of "our" people first. After we take care of our own backyard, then we can
help others.
Paul E. Scott, St. Petersburg
A flawed series
Re: Police and fire disability pension articles.
It seems to us that your three-part series on police and fire disability
pensions was largely without merit due to the fact that there were several
misrepresentations and material omissions regarding provisions of state statutes
(heart/lung bill under Workmen's Compensation), federal tax rulings (Rev. Ruling
85-105), and state and local pension charters. In the future, it would be
refreshing to see articles that represent a holistic approach to such issues
regarding applicable rulings, laws and codes.
As pension board trustees with significant knowledge of these facets, we
understand that an attempt to convey all the intricacies even in a lengthy
three-part series would be futile. A background in pension law and a thorough
knowledge of the respective charters are the minimum needed for anyone to assess
the validity or appropriateness of any claim/decision made by the board. You
further cloud the issue by omitting legitimate cases and illustrations outlining
the proper functioning of these systems.
The Dunedin Municipal Firefighters' Pension Trust Fund meets on the first
Wednesday of each month and is open to the public.
Raymond E. Brown, chairman; Michael C. Mitchell,
secretary; Herbert Lamberton, Clark King and
Max Siegel, board trustees, Dunedin
I could not get past the first page of the March 31 Times without
writing about your story regarding our police officers and firefighters.
Your staff writers - Brad Goldstein, Thomas Tobin and Katherine Shaver -
should have to be police officers for one week before they comment any further
with attacks on whatever the police or firefighters do.
Our police and firefighters have one of the worst jobs in the world,
dealing on a regular basis with the violent elements of society while being
verbally attacked by criminals and liberal news media. They are overworked and
underappreciated. They are the ones who keep our country safe. Without them,
there would be utter pandemonium.
I for one, as a taxpayer, do not mind if they receive tax-free disability
checks for the rest of their lives for the time they put in protecting us.
Your writers should spend more time investigating government employees who
blatantly squander taxpayers' money on a regular basis with everything from
million-dollar, unnecessary plane trips to excessive hiring of office personnel
to taxpayer-paid lunches.
The Times could find much more excessive waste than it has found shadowing
and insulting the only government employees who really put their lives on the
line for us every day.
Elizabeth Degman, South Pasadena
Regarding your recent series concerning disability pensions for police
and firefighters, more specifically, Crash led to psychological pension (April
2), I am the sister of former Largo police officer Martha Funkhouser. There are a
few things your reporter would have found out had he notified Funkhouser in time
to be interviewed for this series.
For one thing, it took six long years to settle anything having to do with
the accident, which, incidentally, was caused by a Largo citizen. (Who can't spot
a police car coming?) My sister was forced to jump through so many hoops on the
way to finally being marginally compensated for her pain and suffering. She had
to visit a minimum of four different doctors, as far away as Tampa, to be
considered physically disabled. She also had to visit various other doctors of
her own choosing just to relieve the pain she suffered.
She hung upside down from her seat belt in that police cruiser for over 40
minutes with no one to talk to and no one to see. All the while, they're calling
her on her own police radio to respond to her own accident. She could not even
reach the radio to tell them that she was the accident.
That accident took away everything Martha had worked years to get. She had
wanted to be a law enforcement officer for many years and went to school to
obtain a criminal justice degree. She interned under then-Police Chief Darryl
Stephens (now chief in St. Petersburg) and was finally accepted into the Police
Academy. There, she worked hard to graduate and was thrilled to be alongside many
of her friends (one who has since died) on the streets of Largo.
During her tenure at the Largo Police Department, Martha offered comfort to
those while responding to a death call (specifically, Myra Chandler Haas, former
editor of the Belleair Bee, when her husband died), reeled in the disruptive on
traffic stops and at bar fights, and paid her dues as a duly sworn officer of the
law.
This accident took away her career of choice, her physical comfort and her
mental well-being. She still suffers fright in closed-in areas, as she was very
closed in during her rescue. She spent that time keeping her head crooked just so
in order to avoid drowning in the dirty water in that ditch.
My other sister and I, and Martha's ex-husband (now), took her to dinner
that night by carrying her into and out of that restaurant to celebrate that she
was alive.
The pension my sister receives does not allow her to sit back and rest when
she hurts. She has had to pay to go back to school to retrain herself for another
career, which she works at full-time today.
I, along with many of your other readers, hope that each situation cited in
this one-sided report is taken with a large grain of salt, ever remembering that
there are two sides to every story and that your reporter could have found that
out had he sent certified letters to each person earlier.
P. S. In the three years since Martha has received her pension, she has had
to visit three different doctors to verify her claim; she has done so willingly.
Eileen Griffin, Largo
I just read the first part of your investigative series on public employee
pension plans. I found several troubling things that I believe paint an extremely
unfavorable view of all firefighters and police officers.
The most unfair brush stroke is when you refer to labor negotiations and
lobbying efforts. The reference to negotiations seems to imply that public
employee unions have some sort of authority over negotiations. The truth is: In
the state of Florida, public employee unions, Firefighters, police, public works
etc. do not have, nor do they want, the ability to strike. In addition, contract
negotiations are non-binding. This means a city or government does not have to
accept any new contract language and may reject any contract revisions. All the
governmental agency has to do is negotiate in "good faith."
In short, any of the pension improvements, disability pensions, separate
pension boards and any other thing contained within a contract is willfully
accepted by the city. These are their pension systems and rules, not the result
of lobbying or strong arm negotiations. The conclusion must be that the cities
are as much at fault as any employee playing by the rules.
All members pay a portion of salary and each city receives money from the state
under Chapters 175 and 185. The cities only fund to a minimum level after
contributions, returns on investments and state money is received. Therefore,
pension moneys belong to the member as much as they belong to the taxpayer. Your
article is incomplete without these facts.
In regards to the lobbying efforts of public sector unions, you don't
mention the lobbying efforts of the Florida League of Cities, which is a major
player in Tallahassee and is funded by your tax dollars. If you mention the
lobbying efforts of the unions, you should make it clear that each city mentioned
in your article also has lobbyists influencing legislation. The cities mentioned
are not victims of union activities nor are they ill equipped to handle and
manage their pension plans. If anything, the cities have the majority of
statutory authority and have some very powerful tools at their disposal.
The last portion of your article that I found disturbing was the lack of
quotes or interviews from local union leaders. You may have tried to contact
some, I don't know. What I do know is you have quoted my ex-city manger and did
not contact me.
Currently, Pinellas Park's disability is 42 percent and we have one member
who has retired on a disability pension.
We (Local 2193) are currently working with the city to raise our pension
benefits. We are trying to do this by paying for the benefits ourselves. However,
disability pensions are not a part of the improvements. We realize the history of
other plans and that disability pensions improvements are expensive and can
damage funds. So we are trying to find ways to improve our plan by working with
the city and finding common ground. Unfortunately, your article has probably
belayed our efforts because, as you know, public opinion is everything,
especially in government. This is where the article did its most damage.
Your article did damage and apparently will continue to do damage to the
majority of the hard working, honest public employees, instead of the minority
that all organizations have.
Nicholas J. Reale, president Pinellas Park Fire Fighters, Local
2193
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