It was the $150 million drain on this year’s budget that is still looming.

The city has declared impasse with Jacksonville’s two costliest unions on pension negotiations and talks with other branches seem to be making little progress.  Since we know not enacting reform before the next budget takes hold would mean an even higher likely city payout, WOKV is looking at whether there’s enough time to find the fix.

City workers

Last week saw two negotiating session with AFSCME local, the union representing about 1,900 city workers.  This brought the total to nine sit downs, but little compromise.

“We don’t see where we can really move on this,” says AFSCME Regional Director Elwood Thompson.

To Thompson, the proposal from the city is tantamount to stripping his members of their benefits.  While they offered to accept one of the city’s proposed points, they don’t accept the rest- majority- of the plan.  Instead, he is trying to offer other ways to help the city save money, like cutting back on overtime pay.

Although, in Thompsons opinion, there has been little if any progress on talks he remains hopeful.

“We’re not declaring impasse and we hope the city isn’t,” he says.

That’s a different approach that the two costliest unions.

Police and Fire

“We’re just waiting on for the Mayor’s Office, his administration, to sit down with the Police and Fire Pension Fund,” says Fraternal Order of Police President Nelson Cuba.

Both the FOP and the Jacksonville Association of Fire Fighters combined accounted for about $120 million of the $150 million pension payout for the city in this budget.  Both stand by their interpretation of a lawsuit settlement which they say places the Police and Fire Pension Fund as the bargaining unit for pensions.

Their refusal to negotiate prompted the city to declare impasse on the two unions, and they’re now waiting for mediation to be set with a Special Magistrate.  In the past, the magistrate has resolved differences in the proposals on benefits.  The impasse now stems mainly from the dispute on who should negotiate, however.

So with the Fund not included in these special sessions, Cuba says they will come of no benefit.

“There is nothing that the Special Master or anyone else could come up with that we would agree to because we’re not the party they should be sitting down and trying to get this done with,” he says.

It seems inevitable that the magistrate will have to decide on the “validity” of the settlement as part of these negotiations, and Cuba says that’s where the true tie-up may come.

“Do you think that the party that he’s [the Mayor] not willing to sit down and talk to is gunna sit by and let you break that agreement without taking you to court? Of course not,” Cuba says.

PFPF Administrator John Keane stopped short of telling me they’re looking in to legal action, saying instead it’s always a “last resort”.

“The groundwork has been laid and the framework has been drawn to promptly resolve the issue of comprehensive pension reform,” he says.

Furthermore, Keane believes comprehensive change wouldn’t come from the proposals on the table, because the costliest aspect right now is what the city is paying back to the Fund- and that’s the cost that should really be under negotiation.  But in order to have that discussion, he says the administration will have to come forward.

Mayor’s response

The city has continued to stand by their interpretation of the settlement, that the unions are the collective bargaining units, and therefore responsible for pension negotiations.  If anything, they feel a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling on pensions only further strengthens that position.

“By the state law, you [the unions] have to do the collective bargaining,” says Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown.

He says just because the city is at impasse, doesn’t mean that all talks have stopped.  Negotiations are allowed to continue while the special session is getting lined up, although both unions told me there is little communication happening.

Brown is confident negotiations across the board will continue to move forward, and do so according to the law.

“I think it’s all gunna work out, I’m very optimistic about it,” he says.

And getting that solution in place would be what Brown calls a “win” for taxpayers and sustainable solution moving forward.

Playing chicken

While Cuba, at this time, denies a solution can come from the magistrate, taking the process to the next step proves risky for both sides.

Once the magistrate hands down a proposal, if either or both sides reject it then the decision goes to City Council.

“That’s when the game of chicken really happens because if someone rejects the special magistrate’s recommendation, the next stop is City Council and it’s like a jury trial- you never know what the jury’s gunna do,” says Council Finance Chair John Crescimbeni.

The magistrate would be bound by the guidelines put in place by the proposals of either party.  Not true of the City Council.

“We’re not hamstrung by those rules that are established by the negotiation process and hamper or restrict the special magistrate’s decision,” he says.

Meaning the door would be wide open on what they could hand down.

The timeline

It could take months to line up the special sessions with the magistrate, although all the parties I spoke with were still confident it would move quickly enough to see a “solution” by the next budget cycle.

Crescimbeni says it’s in the city’s interest to see things move even quicker than that.

“The clock on those savings could start immediately upon the adoption of that agreement, recommendation or Council action,” he says.

That could actually be realized as savings on the payout the city has already made in the budget this year.

But even if the remediation process moves forward in time, there’s still the question of whether that will truly be the end.

“What I see is a prolonged, court-based hearings,” Cuba says.

Much of that will center on how directly the magistrate handles the settlement agreement, which the city says is invalid.

Until that is handed down, Keane says the doors to the PFPF remain open 24 hours a day 7 days a week for the city, and that a pension “fix” would be their top priority.

Mayor Brown agrees on prioritizing the issue, but solving it by his interpretation of the deal.

If everyone’s confidence proves to be false and there is in fact no deal reached, what the city pays in is expected to climb higher than the $150 million of your tax dollars that were invested this year.