IAFF URGES APPROVAL OF HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDING BILL
IAFF - July 25, 2007 - At a press conference held on Capitol Hill, IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger joined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in urging passage of the Senate’s Homeland Security funding bill.
“While we have waited for years to see the implementation of the 9/11 Commission report, we are still fighting to see that our communities are prepared for the next disaster,” Schaitberger said. “Unfortunately, we have been learning through the National Intelligence Estimates that Al-Qaeda has increased its strength and is committed more than ever to attacking our country and citizens.”
Fire fighters know that in a majority of the communities across the United States, fire departments lack the proper equipment, training and personnel needed for emergency responders to do their jobs efficiently, effectively and safely. The Homeland Security Appropriation’s Bill will make sure that funding is available to ensure that fire fighters and the communities they serve are safe – whether at home or work.
Schaitberger encouraged Congress to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report and pass the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, and called on the president – who has threatened to veto the bill – to support Congress and sign the measure into law.
“This bill is a tremendous down payment on guaranteeing the security of our nation’s homeland and protecting our homeland,” said Schaitberger. “It focuses resources where they are needed – here in America, on Americans. Our members – this country’s fire fighters and EMS personnel – and our communities need these dollars to protect our nation and our neighborhoods here at home.”
PFANJ - NJFOP FILE PENSION PROTECTION ACTION IN STATE SUPERIOR COURT
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President Canzanella with NJ
Fraternal Order |
PFANJ - On Tuesday, October 4, 2005, the Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey partnered with the New Jersey State Fraternal Order of Police in the implementation of a lawsuit filed in Superior Court of the State of New Jersey calling into the question the legality of continued underfunding of the Police and Firemen's Retirement System. PFANJ President Tom Canzanella joined NJFOP President Ed Brannigan at a midday news conference conducted at the State House in Trenton for the formal announcement. Below is an excerpt from the press briefing.
The Police and Firemen's Retirement System of New Jersey (PFRS) held a surplus of approximately $938,000,000 in FY2000 drawing down to a deficit of approximately $3,574,000,000 for FY2004. This $4.5 billion dollar deterioration is largely the result of legislation (S-2586 of 2003) that permitted municipal employers of law enforcement officers and firefighters to defer and discount employer required contributions to the PFRS, in association with the State of New Jersey's own failure to make required contributions.
During this same time
frame, police officers and firefighters continued to make their
own statutorily required contributions totaling 8.5% of their base
annual salaries, one, if not the highest public safety employee
pension contribution rate in the Nation.
The State of New Jersey
and its municipalities were first relieved of their obligations
to make employer required
contributions in 1997, when legislation was enacted that revised
the method of accounting and valuing plan assets. Under this new
and more creative method of accounting, the value of PFRS assets
was purposely and substantially increased, resulting in intended
excess or more accurately, inflated assets.
Accordingly, the State and its municipalities used those enhanced assets as a manner in which to relieve themselves of their obligation to match employee contributions for the purpose of tax relief. Despite the "free ride" afforded to both the State and municipalities, police officers and firefighters remained obligated, and so did they continue, to contribute 8.5% of their base annual salaries for which they have neither sought nor been granted any similar relief.
In 2003, with those self-created inflated assets running dry, despite facing a growing PFRS deficit, and in order to provide continued budgetary relief to municipalities who had by their own admission made no provisions whatsoever to resume employer contributions, the State Treasurer proposed, and the Legislature adopted, an initiative (S-2586) permitting municipalities to pay only a discounted fraction of their required pension contributions.
Adding insult to injury, despite the fact that the foregoing legislation in no way extended the State a like ability to skip or discount badly needed pension contributions, they did so nonetheless, paying only a fraction of their required obligation. Again, and to this day as we go forward, police officers and their firefighter counterparts remain obligated to contribute 8.5% of their base annual salaries serving as the sole and sustaining guaranteed plan income.
As a result of the aforementioned
legislation, and in association with the States non-legislated failure
to required contributions, the PFRS funding ratio, which indicates
the financial soundness of the plan, has fallen from 105.65 % for
FY2000, to 100.85% for FY2001, to 95.82% for FY2002, to 88.45% for
FY2003 and to 83.95% for FY2004.
Enactment of the 2003
legislation, in association with the State's failure to make their
own proper contributions absent legal legislative authority, deprives
the PFRS of the funds necessary to maintain it on a sound actuarial
reserve basis. An undeniable consequence of this failed scheme is
the alarmingly significant reduction in plan earnings from investments
and interest that would have been derived from skipped and substandard
contributions. The foregoing serving to jeopardize the financial
soundness of the plan and its ability to make good on earned benefits
as they come due in the future. In that regard, the complete and
total lack of prudent fiscal judgment demonstrated by the strategy
articulated in S-2586, relying upon the exclusive use of employee
contributions to either sustain or accordingly grow the plan, that
resulted in the type of significant funding losses sustained over
the last several years represents an abdication of fiduciary responsibilities
in its purest form.
The complaint seeks to
declare the 2003 legislation (S-2586) unconstitutional, to end any
conflict of interest that would allow the State Treasurer to determine
type and variety of contributions aside from statutory law, and
to direct defendants to make regular full payments to the PFRS for
FY2004, FY2005, and beyond, in accordance with fiscally responsible
actuarial calculations.
The plaintiffs, Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey, I.A.F.F.-AFL-CIO, and the New Jersey State Fraternal Order of Police, along with representative active and retired members and widows of members of these two unions who have been affected by this failure to adequately fund the plan, are represented by the law firm of Greenberg, Dauber, Epstein & Tucker of Newark.
The PFANJ/IAFF and NJFOP
represent the majority of career professional firefighters and law
enforcement officers throughout the State of New Jersey and this
Nation.
Named as defendants in
this
action
are
the
State
of
New
Jersey,
John
McCormac-
Treasurer,
the
New
Jersey
State
Senate
and
General
Assembly.
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