FOLIO
People have a lot of issues with the pension tax.
Paying the debt off at a decelerated rate will cost us more money as a city — $1.5 billion more through 2049.
Other, and some say better, plans have been proposed previously, such as then-Mayor Alvin Brown’s pension task force’s recommendation that we shake the JEA money tree to pay off the debt, currently estimated at $2.8 billion, at a faster rate, freeing up city funds earlier than scheduled. However arguably reasonable, the plan was a non-starter for various reasons, the central one being Brown’s ineffectiveness at wrangling the City Council to do his bidding.
Many have opined that our best solution to the pension debt crisis — and make no mistake, it is a crisis; if you don’t believe it, hark back to the darker days of 2014 when Jacksonville’s credit rating downgrade by both Fitch Ratings and Moody’s was fresh on the mind — is a millage rate increase. Certainly, a property tax increase can fill the funding hole. But good luck convincing local politicians to commit political suicide by proposing and voting for it. Lest you think that doing so wouldn’t sign their own political death warrants next time they run for office, just take a gander at the campaign mailers arriving by the dozens that crucify any politician who has even murmured noncommittally about perhaps supporting a property tax increase.
It’s easy to point out that it isn’t even the current City Council’s nor Mayor Lenny Curry’s faults that we’re in this crisis. At a press conference at City Hall on Aug. 22, former City Council President Eric Smith told me that in 1999 when he left council, the pension was “101 percent funded.” Something (pension tax holidays, the maelstrom of John Keane) happened in the intervening 16 years to put us in this mess. We can keep playing the blame game but it’s not going to pay.
Conditional upon the tax’s implementation and effectiveness is the cooperation of the various pensions, including megalodon Police & Fire Pension Fund to whom we in the news business owe an inordinate debt for keeping us in scandalous tales of mismanagement, Sunshine law violations and abysmal financial decisions. There’s no guarantee that those funds will agree to close their pension plans as called for in the referendum — no agreement, no tax, no solution.
Further, public servants such as police, utility workers and city employees accept lower rates of pay than they could earn in the private sector, in part because they are driven to serve their communities, but also because such positions typically offer pretty sweet retirement packages as a trade-off. Closing the plans creates less incentive for future hires to make a similar sacrifice.
“We’re kicking the can down the road,” has become a common refrain in reference to this tax. Yes, our children and grandchildren will pay for some of our mistakes, but isn’t that true always and forever in our government? OK, to be fair, there was a brief time in history in which the U.S. was debt-free, in 1835, during the presidency of our very own city’s eponym, Andrew Jackson. According to NPR, “It lasted exactly one year.” And when the property value bubble burst, it was on like gangbusters again.
Then there’s the complaint that some of our residents still haven’t seen the benefits of the Better Jacksonville Plan that this tax would replace after it expires in 2030. People have asked why they should vote ‘Yes’ now when they’re still waiting for septic tanks.
Still others are reticent to vote for the tax because Mayor Curry hasn’t done the things they wanted him to do and has done other things they definitely didn’t want him to do — for instance, failing to support an amendment to the human rights ordinance to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, showing up for Donald Trump, purging boards and commissions of Democrats, etc. Such individuals wonder why they should give Curry a solid when all he gives them is solid stool.
All these complaints and suggestions have merit. There is no question that we could come up with a different plan, that the pension tax has unknown variables that must shake out if it is to work, could possibly even be found illegal, and that our city officials have done things over the years that quite frankly stink.
I’m still voting for it. And I suggest you do, too.
Paying off the pension debt with a half-penny sales tax beginning more than a decade from now may not be the best option — a millage rate increase seems to fit that bill and apportion the burden somewhat more fairly between poorer and wealthier citizens — but it’s the choice we have. Ideals are easy from an armchair but nobody gets far in politics without compromising theirs for the greater good. And this tax is just that, a compromise for the greater good. Isn’t that what organized society is all about?
Vote ‘Yes’ for Jacksonville on Aug. 30. Then let’s talk about that millage rate increase.
Follow FOLIO!