HOUSE COMMITTEE RESTORES FIRST RESPONDER FUNDS
IAFF - June 11, 2008 - The Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security in the U.S. House of Representatives has unanimously approved legislation to provide additional funding for the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Services (SAFER) and FIRE Act grant programs. As approved, the 2009 Homeland Security Appropriations Act for 2009 includes $230 million for SAFER and $570 million for FIRE Act.
In his budget for 2009, the president proposed significant cuts to first responder grants, providing only $300 million for FIRE Act grants and eliminating the SAFER grant program altogether.
“I applaud Chairman David Price (D-NC) and the Subcommittee for restoring funding to SAFER and FIRE Act grants,” says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. “The president’s proposal to cut these essential programs was ill-conceived from the start, and would prove incredibly foolish today as local fire department budgets face substantial strain in the weak economy."
The funding allocated by the Subcommittee provides an additional $40 million for SAFER and $10 million for FIRE Act grants over what was appropriated for Fiscal Year 2008.
The Appropriations bill also restores the president’s cuts to additional programs first responder grant programs, including the State Homeland Security Grant Program, the Metropolitan Medical Response System and Interoperable Communications grants.
The Subcommittee’s action is only the first step in the federal budget process. The legislation will next be considered by the full Appropriations Committee the week of June 16.
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.
