Mayor Ron Littlefield has asked the City Council to approve a contract under which Police Chief Freeman Cooper would officially retire at the end of the month as he requested, but stay on the job at his current $116,882 salary for the next three years. That would let Chief Cooper immediately collect a retirement bonus of $174,000 and begin drawing his police pension of approximately $80,000 a year. That’s a sweetheart deal for the chief, but it sets a bad precedent for the police department, effectively constitutes and condones de facto double-dipping, and raises that as a legal issue. The City Council should reject the mayor’s proposal out of hand.
The Council will get to vote a second time on the issue because a vote Tuesday night ended in a 4-4 tie due to Council member Sally Robinson’s absence. Some Council members, and the mayor, seem to think the full Council will approve the proposal on the second vote. They need to think a bit more deeply about what that would mean.
To be clear, the contract idea did not originate with Chief Cooper. It comes on the offer of Mayor Littlefield, who apparently wants desperately to keep Chief Cooper on the job — but didn’t want to say a word to the City Council about the deal he had developed until the last minute. He waited until Monday to tell Council members about Mr. Cooper’s letter of retirement, which the chief submitted on Mar. 1, and his own counter-offer to keep Mr. Cooper on the job.
That not only reflects a lack of transparency in governance by the mayor; it also suggests a disrespectful strategy of putting the Council on the spot in its weekly meeting Tuesday in order to ram the deal through. That’s unfair to the council, and another good reason to reject the contract.
Mayor Littlefield defended his offer by saying that Chief Cooper understands the dynamics of the mayor’s position on pushing consolidation of some city and county services, especially how consolidation would effect the city police department and the county sheriff’s office.
But that’s not a persuasive argument to entice Chief Cooper to continue in his job as a contractor. The mayor should not have to look too far for a replacement if the chief retires. If Chief Cooper is an able administrator, he surely has one or two competent assistant chiefs who could manage the department competently on an interim basis, if not permanently. Keeping Chief Cooper on under these circumstances would negatively affect the department’s morale as it pertains to the possibility of advancement, and it would set a costly precedent for other high-ranking officers who would like to double-dip on their pension.
The mayor’s other argument for support of his plan concerns the chief’s recent bout of prostate cancer. Mr. Littlefield said the chief wants to be sure to collect the $174,000 retirement bonus while he can to make certain his heirs receive the benefit.
That’s an understandable concern for Chief Cooper, but that doesn’t justify making a bad precedent of double-dipping. Governmental pension systems, like most, are based on actuarial averages of longevity and benefits accumulated for total years of service. Allowing a member of a pension system to get both the pension and the salary simultaneously essentially provides what retirement analysts call “two pays for the same event” and undermines the pension fund’s sustainability.
Double-dipping is traditionally not allowed by government entities, which supplement government employee pension funds with taxpayer money, because it effectively consumes pension fund money that wouldn’t otherwise be consumed by the recipient. Indeed, before the City Council votes on the matter again it ought to get an independent legal opinion on the question of double-dipping.
The mayor, moreover, cannot argue that the police pension fund is fiscally sustainable without taxpayer supplements. Council chairman Jack Benson, at least, has confirmed that the city supplements the system with taxpayer money, especially since the system adopted a Deferred Retirement Option Plan. The DROP benefit unwisely offers especially generous benefits to top-ranking officials. It is that DROP payment that would fund the $174,000 retirement bonus now due to Chief Cooper, in addition to his generous pension and city health benefits.
The controversial DROP program should be reviewed to make certain it is not an undue drain on the pension fund and does not, as past experience with prior chiefs also suggests, disproportionately favor top officials. If Chief Cooper wants to retire, the Council should let him do so — and say no to the mayor’s contract.