PENSION MINUTES SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY

I asked for the City of Memphis pension board minutes for the last year and I recently got them. I will have to compliment Mayor Wharton and the City Attorney's Office for their handling of this request. They sent the files electronically which is a great improvement over the past administration. Congratulations.

In looking through the minutes several things jump out at me. First you have to understand that the pension board is made up mostly of insiders who have a self interest in the results of the board's decisions. Look at the make up in the attached file. There is only one public member representing the interests of the taxpayers who pay for a large portion of these pensions.

I find the following areas of interest.

• Disability retirements, ordinary versus line of duty
  
• Disability retirements in general in most cases are approved and where they are not there are lawyers available to take the matter to court.
  

It appears that line of duty pensions are more generous than ordinary pensions and therefore there is a great interest in getting a line of duty disability pension approved. I have attached a section of the pension ordinance on this subject.

Several other items in the minutes are interesting. Page 29 (Jack Sammons), Page 48 (Keith McGee and W. W. Herenton) and page 56 (Yalanda McFadgon).

Click here to see the City of Memphis pension board minutes for the last year

Click here to see the makeup of the City of Memphis pensioin board
Click here to read the provisions of the City of Memphis pensions plan concerning disability pensions

THE JANUARY 2001 PENSION SCAM

Is there any better example of the games that the political class plays than the attached story from the Commercial Appeal. I talked to Jim Strickland about this story and he only found out about this situation when certain people started retiring who were not in appointed positions when the January 2001 ordinance was revoked in 2004. Scott McCormick wrote the language and it was assumed then that only those who were currently in appointed positions in 2004 would be covered under the January 2001 pension resolution which allowed elected and appointed people to retire after 12 years regardless of age.

What happened? Well it turns out that Sara Hall and certain Herenton administration officials twisted the language and determined that if a civil service employee was later moved to an appointed position after the revocation of the January 2001 ordinance and if they had 12 years or more of service, they could retire regardless age. Some have and more are probably lining up.

It is a disgrace and it points out that the pension system should be changed so that all future employees should be covered by a 401K like the people who make the whole system possible, the taxpayers. It is time for the taxpayers and voters to take back control of the system and their pocketbooks.

 

Click here to read the Commercial Appeal article

 

With all the talk about consolidation panels and school problems, the one clear fact that I have found is BIGGER IS NOT BETTER. The further you move away from the voters, the taxpayers, the parents and students and the more layers of bureaucracy that are involved, the worse are the results. The optimum and the most efficient size of a school district is about 40,000 students.

I have attached several results of studies of school consolidation. My conclusion is that consolidation of government is probably similar. Bigger is not better.

Mike Carpenter responded to the above email to say that no one is considering consolidating the City and County school systems. I would be willing to bet that there is a substantial element that would love to see this happen during any City/County consolidation effort. My point is that consolidation in and of itself may be a bad idea as bigger is not necessarily better. e.g. (our Federal Government). I would even propose that the Memphis City School system would be better if it was broken up into two smaller systems concentrating on neighborhood identities with more parental involvement and smaller and more efficient school administrations. Crazy, maybe, but why not study this option?

Click here to see the history of school consolidation

Click here to see the reality of school consolidation