You would think that when policy decisions are made that have a major impact on Lansing citizens' pocketbooks, their elected representatives would be involved. You'd think that those decisions would be made in open meetings that citizens could attend. And even if you were wrong about all that, you'd think that those decisions would be announced to the public and published so that citizens could see what was done, even though they were shut out of the process.

On Monday, August 27, 2012 Lansing City Council held a public hearing on a proposed new Police and Fire Retirement System ordinance and then voted unanimously to pass it. In my "public comment" before the vote, I pointed out that a couple of the provisions had already been in effect for 2.5 years.  I don't remember where I heard that, and I was wrong. The new provisions had been in effect for much, much longer.

One of the new provisions was that there is no minimum age for retirement. If a public safety officer has 25 years of service, he can retire at any age. The other was the pension multiplier. In the old ordinance, it was 3.2% for police with the rank of sergeant or above, 2.95% for everybody else. Now everybody gets the 3.2% multiplier.

Old ordinance. First, let's look at the old ordinance. The ordinances are on the City Clerk's website, and since the new Police and Fire Retirement System ordinance has not yet been posted, that is where we find the "old" ordinance. To see it for yourself, go to the Clerk's website, click Charter & Ordinances, and search for Chapter 294. Under (i) Voluntary Retirement it says

(1)	A . . . member may retire after his or her attainment of age 50 if he or she has 25 or more years of credited service, or after his or her attainment of age 55.

Under (k) Retirement Allowance it says:

1. Upon a member's retirement, except as provided in subsection b, as provided in this section, he or she shall receive a retirement allowance equal to the sum of 2.95 percent of his or her final average compensation multiplied by the number of years, and fraction of a year, of his or her credited service, not to exceed 25 years.
    

2. Upon a Police Department Member's retirement, who holds the rank of sergeant or above at the time of his or her retirement, effective as of August 1, 1999, as provided in this section, he or she shall receive a retirement allowance equal to 3.2 percent of the member's final average compensation multiplied by the number of years and fraction of a year, of credited service not to exceed 25 years.

Contracts. Now let's look at the contracts for the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) and Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) to see when the new provisions actually went into effect:

Provision	Group	Effective Date	Contract	Page
No minimum age required	Firefighters	1/1/1988	IAFF	85
	Police	7/30/1984	FOP Non-Sup	38
3.2% multiplier	Firefighters	7/1/2005	IAFF	91
	Police	12/1/2001	FOP Non-Sup	41

What this means is that the Police and Fire Retirement System ordinance has been wrong since 1984 - 28 years. That is before some of our current public safety officers were born.

New ordinance. I could not find the new ordinance anywhere on the City's website. However, I did get a paper copy before it was passed. It is 45 pages long, so I won't include the entire document, but here are some selected pages:

• Cover letter, introduction, and summary

• Age and service requirement

• Multiplier

Lansing citizens should be relieved that after 28 years, the Police and Fire Retirement System ordinance is finally going to reflect the reality of the union contracts. Right? Not so fast. It still requires some "tweaking".

FAC. Final average compensation (FAC) is one of the factors used to calculate the pension. The others are the years of service and the multiplier. FAC can include payments other than the regular salary, and in the collective bargaining process, unions push the employer to include anything that remotely resembles compensation - because the the higher the FAC, the higher the pension.

The old ordinance did not list the types of compensation included in FAC. It listed them for "base pay", but base pay apparently is not the same as FAC:

       Final average compensation means the monthly average of the compensation paid a member during the period of the 24 highest consecutive months of his or her credited service immediately preceding the date his or her employment by the City as a policeman, except those officers that hold the rank of sergeant or above at the time of his or her retirement, effective as of August 1, 1999, or fireman last terminates. If he or she has less than 24 months of credited service, his or her final average compensation shall be the monthly average of the compensation paid him or her for his or her total period of credited service. For those officers that hold the rank of sergeant or above effective as of August 1, 1999, the final average compensation is limited to 110 percent of an employee's base pay at the time of retirement. Base pay shall be defined as annual base salary, longevity, gun and clothing allowances, sick leave, shift premium and four holidays.

In the new ordinance, FAC is defined on pages 3 and 4. For a police officer, FAC includes:

Annual base salary

Overtime pay (including holiday pay)

Longevity

Gun allowance

Clothing allowances

Sick leave reimbursement (buy-back)

Shift premium

Retroactive pay (prorated by effective date)

For a police supervisor, FAC includes all of the above plus compensatory time buy-back (up to a maximum of 60 hours), provided that the compensatory time was earned in the same 24 months on which FAC is based.

For a firefighter, FAC includes:

Annual base salary

Overtime pay

Acting pay ["acting" at a rank higher than that actually held by the employee?]

Ambulance wage differential pay

Longevity

Holidays pay

Field training instructor pay

Retroactive pay (prorated by effective date)

Tweaking the new ordinance. At the October 16 meeting of the Police and Fire Retirement System board, attorney Ken Lane of Clark Hill, who represents the City's law department at retirement board meetings, said that he'd been shown a MOU (memorandum of understanding?) that he himself had given the City Attorney's office that says that FAC for firefighters also includes the food and clothing allowance. It was just somehow overlooked. So, he said, we might be needing to do a little tweak to the ordinance.

Does this mean the new ordinance will have to go back before the City Council?

Ordinance/contract/MOU. Retirement/pension provisions can have a major impact on the City's budget. Apparently, there was a time when they were considered so important that they were in the City Charter rather than the ordinances. I say this having seen this paragraph on page 38 of the IAFF contract:

Effective January 1, 1988

     Any member of the bargaining unit who has twenty-five (25) years of credited service or more with the Lansing Fire Department may file a written application for retirement setting forth the date, not less than fifteen (15) days or more than ninety (90) days subsequent to the filing thereof, he/she desires to be retired. Upon verification by the department that said employee has a total of twenty-five (25) years or more of credited service he/she shall be retired on the date specified. Section 19 (b) of Chapter 16 of the 1955 Lansing City Charter shall no longer apply to members of the bargaining unit who have been members of the Lansing Fire Department for a period of twenty-five (25) years of credited service or more.

The highlighted sentence is interesting in 2 ways. One is that it refers to the 1955 City Charter, which was replaced 10 years previously by the 1978 (current) City Charter. The other is that it boldly claims to amend the City Charter. According to the current City Charter, the Charter can be amended only by the people of Lansing. This is from page 4 of the Charter:

The following is from page 37 of the FOP Non-Supervisory contract. It at least mentions that the Police and Fire Retirement System law is now in the ordinances rather than the Charter:

ARTICLE 21

VOLUNTARY RETIREMENT

Chapter 15 of the Charter of the City of Lansing (NOW CHAPTER 294 OF THE CODIFIED ORDINANCES OF THE CITY OF LANSING) is expressly incorporated herein and amended to provide as follows . . .

But wouldn't it have been simpler to say "Chapter 294 of the codified ordinances of the City of Lansing is expressly incorporated herein and amended to provide as follows . . ."?

Anyway, it, too, claims to amend. So apparently we must accept as a fact of life in Lansing that collective bargaining agreements - whether in the form of contracts or memoranda of understanding (MOU) - override city ordinances.

Solution. Whether or not you like the idea that policy for the City of Lansing is being written out of the public view by unknown individuals - that is, in collective bargaining sessions - it would help if we at least were informed of what that policy was. I propose the creation of a document based on the current city ordinances but updated with the policies that are actually in effect - policies established by collective bargaining contracts, memoranda of understanding (MOU), whatever. The parts that differ from the formally-enacted ordinance could be distinguished from the rest by printing them in a different color or typeface, and the source of the new policy and the date it was "enacted" could be given. Until someone comes up with a better name, we could call this document the "City Neo-ordinances", and it would be posted on the City's website so everyone - citizens, City administration and City Council - could see how things really work.