Aaron Mischler, the president of the New Orleans Firefighters union, joined WWL's Newell Normand this week to discuss the firefighters' pension, which is enmeshed in controversy over an agreement allegedly made by Mayor LaToya Cantrell to increase it on the sly and a budget report that says that could be dangerous.
The Bureau of Governmental Research released a report a few weeks ago that revisited the landmark settlement of 2016 between the city and its firefighters and said that increasing payouts could push the city's general fund budget into the red.
On the other side, even after the 2016 agreement, the NOLA firefighters' pension remains one of the most underfunded of its kind in the country, and they want the agreement revisited.
NOLA.com reports that Mayor LaToya Cantrell, the firefighters union and the board overseeing the pension amended the settlement agreement earlier this year without telling the City Council or the public to increase the benefits, including raising the minimum monthly payments from $1,200 to $1,500.
BGR officials warned that could be dangerous, saying the city already pays out more than $50 million each year to cover the pension’s future liability — which is about 6% of the city's general fund.
Mischler called the BGR report “egregious and rife with misinformation.” He says the bottom line is the NOLA fire department is losing members after a few years to cities with better pension plans, so giving better benefits is actually a staffing issue.
"It's obvious to me that firefighters are just common fodder to these people," Mischler said, "while we risk life and limb destroying our bodies and putting our present and future physical and mental well-being on the backburner to keep our citizens and visitors safe."
He said while firefighters on the pension board are responsible for some bad decisions that led to the settlement in 2016, so are members of the city council. "So while we take responsibility for the bad investments and not shepherding those those guys a little bit more, the city was also culpable in those bad investments," he said.
He also called Newell on the carpet for not supporting Cantrell's move to increase their pensions.
"We were underfunded by over $150 million ... If that $150 million was put into it in 2014 when this new board took over with the assets that were in there, adding that $150 million and doing elementary math on, return of 6% -- And that's a conservative, the target would be 7.5% -- At a conservative rate of 6% on that return with that money from 2014 today would put the fund over $450 million, which would put us in the upper echelon of pensions around the country," Mischler said.
"So that nonchalant attitude that you had yesterday was, I deem it as disgust. By continually and seemingly overtly conflating the bad practices of the old board by simultaneously misrepresenting the accomplishments of the new board is, again, disingenuous. You were waxing poetic on an issue that you were not informed on, namely our current investment practices."
The two were off to to races on whether the bill is a staffing bill or a pension bill and what the parameters of it should be, but Newell dropped the mic with this:
"I've been very supportive of firefighters, law enforcement, first responders. But one thing I understand is math. And math has no emotion," Newell said. "The other thing I understand is that y'all entered into an agreement. And that had some measures that needed to be met. Nobody was happy with the agreement. The city wasn't happy. Y'all weren't happy that the city council wasn't happy. No one was happy. Which is typically how agreements, quality agreements work, where no one is getting everything. And it was a compromise. And we don't even have to cry over the spilled milk."
Newell also said, "Every firefighter in this state has 100% at 30 years. Every police officer in this state has 100% at 30 years. You're not going to mislead me, and you're not going to mislead the people who are listening to this, because I'm going to sit here and tell you you're wrong."
The entire interview is a must listen, and you can hear it above.