Pittsburgh Pension Problem: Almost There

Those of you listening to 80's pop on the City Channel for a couple of hours today probably were wondering what the holdup was. We understood that Pittsburgh City Council was to hold a Legislative Session at 1:30 today to overturn Mayor Ravenstal's "cooperative" veto to attempt to stave off state control of the city's pension. The meeting actually started around 2:00 and almost immediately was recessed until after 3:00 PM.

Here's why:



(Click to enlarge)

Council did overturn the Mayor's veto today (8 to 1; Rev. Burgess being the only dissenting vote), thus putting the new Council/Controller plan into place which dedicates the asset of future parking taxes to the city pension fund to bring that up to 50% funded.

The hold up -- the reason why Council must meet again tomorrow -- is that upon further reflection by everyone (PERC, ACT 47, ICA) it was decided that the City must dedicate $735,680,000 over 31 years instead of $414.7 million (the difference between a 5% and 8% discount rate).

New legislation is being drawn up to amend the Pittsburgh Code, Title Two - Fiscal, Article XI (I believe).

The Mayor will need to "cooperatively" veto this new legislation quickly so that Council may then override that veto. Council did note that the Mayor and his Administration have been very forthcoming in providing whatever Council has needed these last 24 hours or so. And in an email exchange between Council President Harris and Yarone Zober, Zober indicated that the Mayor will quickly veto this latest round so that Council may overturn the veto in time to meet the Midnight December 31st deadline.

Council will hold a Legislation Session tomorrow at 1:00PM (followed right after with a Standing Committee Meeting) and another 11:00PM Legislative Session -- yes, 11:00 PM on New Year's Eve -- followed by another Standing Committee Meeting.

Um, Happy New Year, City Council?
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