PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia has spent at least $277 million on a program that was designed to prevent staff shortages, and yet city government is now more than 3,000 employees short of what it needs.
The Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) has been controversial since its start in 1999. It allows city employees to collect both their pensions and salaries for up to four years by declaring their intention to retire, thus giving the city time to fill the position and transition with a new employee. It was considered especially crucial for public safety agencies.
Critics charged that DROP allows employees to double-dip with the money they collect, and early in the program, voters were so opposed to it that elected officials who enrolled lost their seats.
Officials have made changes over the years to make it more palatable, and the program survived.
A 2017 study by the state watchdog PICA found that it had been an expensive program.
However, the study said that uniformed employees were staying on the job longer, so it at least seemed to be working as intended. It showed that fire union members were retiring 5.9 years later than previously, and police union members’ retirements were happening 4.8 years later.
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Five years and a pandemic later, it clearly is not preventing staff shortages.
The Philadelphia Police Department has nearly 700 positions unfilled, the Fire Department has 700 and the Department of Prisons has almost 800 unfilled jobs.
Finance director Rob Dubow says DROP was not designed for the seismic changes of 2020 and 2021.
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“There are larger societal changes in employment patterns that one program’s not going to be able to completely counterbalance,” said Dubow.
Mayor Jim Kenney said uniformed jobs simply are not as attractive as they once were.
“It’s not only a dangerous job and a job fraught with potential injury and death, but the whole environment’s not good,” said Kenney. “There’s so many other choices for people coming out of college or coming out of high school.”
Still, the city paid nearly $300 million over the years for a program that didn’t work when it was most needed. So, was it — as critics charge — a waste of money?
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Neither PICA nor Dubow said there’s enough information to conclude that.
“I don’t think it’s clear (that) it hasn’t helped keep police officers longer,” Dubow said. He added that without it, the situation might be worse.
Kenney was never a big fan of DROP, but he doesn’t think the shortages will cause the city to reconsider the program.
“DROP is what it is,” he said. “It’s memorialized forever, probably.”