JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Mayor Alvin Brown is saying Wednesday night's deadlocked City Council vote that doomed a pension reform agreement was a result of politics, and Brown's opponent in the mayor's race called the plan a "problem, not a solution."
After seven years of discussion, negotiations and multiple revisions, the vote came down to a 9-9 tie. Since the same plan cannot be voted on a second time, a new agreement will need to be reached before it can be approved to address the growing defect in the pension fund -- now up to $1.7 billion.
"We just have to get the politics out of this," Brown said. "People have to do what is best for Jacksonville."
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But Brown running for a second term and more than half the members of City Council could be replaced by July 1. Curry says this will definitely be an election issue.
"Mayor Brown's pension deal is smoke and mirrors; just another problem not a solution," Curry said in a statement.
Another development this week casts a second cloud over the current pension agreement. Circuit Judge Thomas Beverly ruled that the current plan is illegal because it was negotiated in private -- in violation of Florida's Sunshine Law.
While Beverly said current benefits could continue despite his voiding of the agreement, he also said any future agreements would have to be not only negotiated in public meetings, but the negotiations must be between the city and the police and fire unions, not with the pension fund's board of trustees.
The agreement that failed to pass City Council was negotiated with the pension fund.
City Council President Clay Yarborough said his problem with the plan was that it could not be modified for a decade.
"If we had that safety in there about adjusting this sometime in the next 10 years, I was prepared to vote in favor of it tonight," said Yarborough.
On The Morning Show Thursday, the mayor's chief of staff, Chris Hand, said the plan the council failed to pass would have saved $1.3 billion over the next 30 years.
"I think the word we'd all feel is disappointed on behalf of the taxpayers and first responders," Hand said. "This is a process the city has been dealing with for seven years. No one can claim that the city hasn't done its due diligence, looked at every aspect of this issue. In fact, this is the third agreement this City Council has considered, the second that Mayor Brown has brought to them, that they've turned down. So, unfortunately, the long and winding road of pension reform continues."
Other council members who voted against the bill said it was because the plan lacked a clear funding source.
"Nothing matters until you get a funding source," Councilman Bill Bishop said. "This is why I say the whole thing is designed to fail. It's designed for everybody to say, 'I voted for change,' without having to make a change because there is no funding source."