ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Aldermen declined to vote Monday on a bill to reduce pension payments for firefighters who are declared disabled in the future.
Alderman Joe Vaccaro said his bill, Board Bill 2 -- which competes with Mayor Francis Slay's overhaul proposal, would save the city at least $674,027 each year.
Firefighters disabled while working now get 75 percent of the highest salary for their job class. Nearly 50 percent of the fire retirees leave with disability pensions, the subject of a recent Post-Dispatch investigation, printed this winter.
Vaccaro's bill would revamp disability rules in the Firemen's Retirement System of St. Louis and pay disabled firefighters 100 percent of their salary while they go to college or a training school. In exchange, disabled firefighters would get just 25 percent of their salaries after the first five years.
A pension trustee told the board that the bill was largely crafted by firefighters and trustees.
Few argue the city doesn't need to reform the system.
"This is a national epidemic," said Tom Villa, alderman in far south city's 11th Ward. "We gave benefits we now find too rich."
Some aldermen at today's meeting of the board's Public Employees Committee, however, said they prefer the system-wide overhaul proposed by Slay, which makes many changes similar to those in Vaccaro's bill, but also strips retirees of years of acquired perks.
Actuarial reports paid for by the mayor estimate his proposal will save the city $8 million a year.
"There is no guarantee that Board Bill 2 saves us any money in the first year," said Alderman Craig Schmid, chair of the committee and sponsor of Slay's bills.
Schmid said Vaccaro's bill was instead a decoy, meant to look like "true change, true reform" without actually delivering savings to the public. Such a bill would allow firefighters and their elected supporters to return to constituents and say they did what was required, Schmid said.
Vaccaro was frustrated after the meeting.
"It's not a decoy," he said. "It's a start. Nobody said this was the end. This was the beginning. We could have saved $1 million this year had we acted on it last year.
"And now if we don't act on it this year, we don't even save $1 million next year."
But after more than two hours of debate, only a few aldermen agreed with Vaccaro, and Schmid called an end to the hearing.
He said he'd take the issue up again Monday.
Copyright 2012 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
