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More than 100 Kansas City firefighters and other city employees packed a City Council meeting Thursday to protest Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s proposal to explore changing the city’s pension system.
Louie Wright, president of Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said his members became alarmed by the statement in Funkhouser’s recent State of the City speech that he wants to bring the city’s pension funds more in line with standard business practice.
Many companies have moved away from defined benefit retirement plans to defined employee contribution programs such as 401(k) plans.
“It’s off the table. It’s not negotiable,” Wright said. “We’ll not make that change as long as I’m the leader of Local 42.”
Funkhouser said he has great respect for the firefighters and other municipal employees, and he worked hard as a former city auditor and now as mayor to make sure the city’s pension plans are fully funded.
But he also said the cost to taxpayers to fund those pension systems is growing at an alarming rate. He pointed to a report by the city auditor, Gary White, that said the required contributions for those systems nearly doubled to more than $52 million from $27 million over the last eight years.
“We can’t probably sustain that for the future,” Funkhouser said, while emphasizing that any changes would not affect existing benefit commitments. He said he’s beginning a conversation that needs to occur as the city transitions to a more modern approach to retirement benefits.
In the meeting, firefighters hoisted placards with messages such as, “Keep Your Funky Hands Off My Pension” and “Local Unions #42, 3808 and 500 Support Retirement with Dignity and Security.”
Wright argued a move away from a defined benefit program would not be cheaper. He gave council members packets of information stating that, “Taxpayers will foot the bill for the high costs to change from a proven traditional pension system to a radical new system of millions of private accounts.”
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