Let me remind you that The Alamo fell 179 years ago today after a 13 day siege. I’ll probably play the Asleep at the Wheel CD while I am out and about today.
“Bad, bad deal” is what the City Council Budget Committee Chair says about the deal that will be announced today between the H-Town administration and the Fire Fighters Pension leaders.
This tweet came out last night:
Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer • 11h 11 hours ago
Mayoral race fall-out could be fascinating: Does it take wind out of sails of those running on pensions? Or, elevate their signature issue?
This issue is definitely not going away. Commentary doesn’t really think it is a good idea to announce a deal on a big deal that looks like it will be a big political deal during the upcoming campaign. Throw in the involvement of one of the major candidates for H-Town Mayor and it starts to look like a suspicious deal. Really?
Here are some more tweets from late last night:
Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer 17m17 minutes ago
And here’s @mmorris011’s early look at pension deal to be announced tomorrow. @s_costello calls it “bad, bad deal.” | http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Mayor-firefighter-pension-trustees-reach-6118184.php …
Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer 12m12 minutes ago
In January, @SylvesterTurner told me re: his involvement in brokering deal (long rumored): “I’m not going to try and get ahead of anything.”
Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer 3m3 minutes ago
Roadblock to pension reform long been @whitmire_john. But thought to be softening. In Jan. he told me he was “open-minded” to meet & confer.
Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer 11m11 minutes ago
Another big detail unearthed by @mmorris011 tonight: City agrees to not lobby #txlege for 3 yrs while deal in place | http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Mayor-firefighter-pension-trustees-reach-6118184.php …
Here is from Mike Morris’ Chron piece on the deal:
The fire pension board’s announcement credited mayoral candidate and state Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, with assisting in the talks.
Well, we now know Rep. Turner’s position on this issue.
Also from the Chron is a reaction from one of the City’s experts on pensions:
Craig Mason is a pension consultant who represents the city on the police, fire and municipal pension boards. Mason, who followed the talks but had not seen the final deal, said the deal would see firefighters contribute more of their pay toward their retirement and have the city contribute less, for a term of three years.
Mason and other pension reformers have said, however, that without changing pension benefits the city will not be solving the problem long term.
And here is why some folks will be scratching their heads today – also from the Morris piece:
(Mayor) Parker’s support for the deal is curious, given that she said the pension trustees’ proposal from the fall “reflects no true pension reform” and repeated the same stance as recently as Wednesday, saying, “There’s no reform in that … we’re just putting more money into a system that I think needs help.”
I am certainly scratching my head. Well at least a lot more folks will now be paying attention to this issue. I wonder if that’s what the deal makers wanted. Aside from the deal makers, I wonder who will step forward to say it is a good deal. Stay tuned for more!
Here is the entire Mike Morris article: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Mayor-firefighter-pension-trustees-reach-6118184.php.
There are sixteen pitchers in MLB history who have struck out 3000 plus hitters in their career. Fourteen of them have been voted into the MLB Hall of Fame. Name the two who haven’t?
From Chron.com this morning:
U.S. employers extended a healthy streak of hiring in February by adding 295,000 jobs, the 12th straight monthly gain above 200,000.
Of course, the GOP still won’t give The President any credit.
Len Cannon from KHOU-TV did a commentary on the Ferguson Report yesterday. Check it out here:
http://www.khou.com/videos/life/2015/03/05/commentary-with-len-cannon/24466623/.
The Rocket with 4,672 strikeouts and Curt Schilling with 3,116 have yet to get a phone call from the MLB Hall of Fame of course.
The ‘Stros had three dingers and a win yesterday.
Camposcommunications' Blog 
[…] of having to make $77 million less in cuts over the next three years counts for something to me. Campos and PDiddie have […]
Given that HFD’s pension is funded 91%, consistently has market returns of well over the 8.5% needed, and is protected by the state legislature, this deal is not bad at all. It is common knowledge that the city is looking at 3 more years of starting off with huge deficits so this arrangement helps stabilize city budget funding around $25 million a year for those three years, has HFD employees paying millions more into their own pension, and saves both groups untold amounts of money in legal fees by dropping those court cases, it’s not a bad deal at all.
I’m curious as to what you and some of the others actually expected from the mayor or pension system. It is crystal clear that HFD is underpaid compared to other major departments, and underpaid from cradle to grave at that, so lowering compensation when other cities are not makes Houston less competitive for better quality employees as it did for their police and municipal workers. Being the low cost leader in employee compensation does not help the public nor does it make a great deal of sense.
So while a better solution would be for the city to pay in the needed amounts to all three pensions each year and employ only the number of people it can afford, this particular deal is by far better than the “deal” the other workers have received over the past ten years or so.