Last One On The Ladder

[November 22nd, 2006] Portland voters may have overwhelmingly voted this month to reform the financially hemorrhaging Fire & Police Disability & Retirement Fund, but those changes don't mean anything until Jan. 1.

And the Fire Bureau is still sorting out whether to slide in a few more hires before the old system—and its more favorable benefits—expires.

When City Hall began planning the new plan's Jan. 1 implementation, officials discovered the Police Bureau had nine prospective officers slated to join on Dec. 28, and the Fire Bureau had four new officers scheduled to join Dec. 14.

"That concerned me," says City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, the chief architect of the FPD&R reforms. "Eighty-two percent of voters want employees to be under the new system."

Mayor Tom Potter asked Police Chief Rosie Sizer to defer her new hires until January so the incoming officers would fall under the new system, which puts them in the state's Public Employees Retirement System.

Sizer agreed to that request. Her agreement makes those new police hires the first not to come in under the current system, which has accrued a $1.6 billion deficit. Under the existing system, local property taxes fund public safety pensions; a board dominated by police and firefighters decides disability claims.

Fire Chief Dave Sprando took a different initial approach, however. Potter aide Austin Raglione, the mayor's point person on reform, says Sprando insisted that deferring the four hires would mess up his bureau's training schedule.

Fire Bureau spokesman Lt. Allen Oswalt and Rich Rodgers, Commissioner Erik Sten's liaison to the bureau, said Monday that no final decision has been reached. But Rodgers says City Hall is working on a plan to bring the four in as temporary employees so they aren't left without a paycheck, but to classify them under the new voter-approved system for retirement purposes.

Meanwhile, another aspect of the pension reform also is coming into question. That component deals with who will implement the fix.

New charter language calls for the FPD&R administrator to be a "qualified disability expert" and report to the mayor. The changes also give bureau chief status to that person.

Raglione says Potter plans to keep current administrator Babette Heeftle as interim director for at least a couple months while an open recruitment is conducted to fill that job permanently. Heeftle, who didn't immediately return requests for comment, could compete for the permanent post.

Heeftle administered the disability system when many of the abuses that prompted the voter-approved reforms took place; she also stands to get a pay raise if she keeps her job permanently, because her salary ($92,866 in 2005) is far below the average bureau chief's.

City Auditor Gary Blackmer, who currently supervises Heeftle, acknowledges that Heeftle lacks a formal credential fitting the "qualified disability expert" description. But he argues that Heeftle's experience over the past several years qualifies her.

"She has been administering a disability program for eight to 10 years now," Blackmer says, adding that he ascribes the well-documented abuses of the disability system to the board and to poorly written city charter language rather than to Heeftle.

Saltzman isn't so sure Heeftle is automatically the person who should run the new bureau, which, under the voter-approved changes, will have a more independent board.

"It's debatable," he says. "I think that's a decision for the new board to make."