The purpose of this letter is to recap our positions as well as reconfirm where we stand with respect to protecting the interests of all HPD officers and to distinguish the two distinct and separate issues that are currently being considered.

This letter to the membership may seem overdue to some who have not had the opportunity to keep up with our positions via our website and membership meetings on a number of recent important evolving matters. The purpose of this letter is to recap our positions as well as reconfirm where we stand with respect to protecting the interests of all HPD officers and to distinguish the two distinct and separate issues that are currently being considered – pension under funding and a re-opener of the current meet-and-confer agreement.

PROP 15 Issue and the Potential Liability

Not long after the first of the year, the White administration, in an attempt to get a handle on the city’s financial responsibilities, both short and long term, determined through actuarial analysis that the municipal pension system, which covers the largest number of city workers, was severely under funded by as much as $1.8 billion. During that same time, another actuarial analysis dealing with the police fund was completed and it was estimated that it was under funded by as much as $850 million. Based on those revelations, the mayor and city council unanimously voted to hold a one time opt-out election to make sure the provisions of Proposition 15 did not bind the city, which if left unchallenged, would according to city financial experts, lock the city into having to fund the pension systems to the 100% level.

Additionally, it would prevent the city and the pension funds from being able to negotiate any needed benefit reductions, even if they were needed to keep the fund solvent.

The city’s position to opt out passed overwhelmingly due to the fact that the municipal pension fund in particular, was in such a precarious financial state, that it enabled the administration’s message - the city must have the latitude to negotiate something with both the municipal fund and the police fund to make sure both funds could achieve the funding level needed to remain solvent. Obviously, this message clearly resonated with voters.

The HPOU understood the gravity of the financial situation that would confront all of us if Proposition 15 remained in place for the city of Houston. In order for the city to immediately comply with the 100% funding component that was mandated by the constitutional provision, it would have cost the city an additional $80-plus million in the FY 05 budget, which began on July 1, 2004.

Additionally, we understood the unfairness of locking outrageous benefit calculations such as 90% pensions for municipal employees (except police and fire) with 25 years of service while only contributing 4% of their salaries to the municipal fund while police were required to contribute 8.75% of their money to the police fund for a lesser benefit.

We realized that such a hit on the budget would have devastating effects on all current city employees and would set the stage for a very dire situation for all of us. Accordingly, we did not join in with the group of municipal workers and retiree organizations to oppose the effort because we knew there were significant safeguards in place via contracts and state law to protect us from being exposed to any unilaterally imposed negative pension benefit changes by the city.

Therefore, we did not oppose the administration in their attempts to opt the city out of the provisions of Proposition 15. Again, we knew the HPOPS meet-and-confer statute, along with the state law establishing our pension fund, would protect active and retired HPD officers and their families. Even more importantly, we knew that if the city had to immediately fund the municipal pension as well as the HPOPS fund 100 %, the city would not be in a position to negotiate long-term solutions to the funding problems but would end up financially devastating current city employees via the budget process for many years to come.

Pension Issues

As mentioned in the previous paragraphs with regard to HPOPS funding, it has come to all of our attention over the past several months that our fund is looking at an $850 million unfunded liability problem. Accordingly, the level of heightened tension and anger among active and retired officers has grown rapidly. We receive calls daily from active and retired officers and some widows of officers that run the gambit of being angry to practically irrational regarding their contempt for Mayor White in reference to how he has publicly handled the matter.

We hear from active officers who express conciliatory comments that they know something must be done that will involve them giving more to help the situation but they want the retirees to feel the pain, too. We have heard from retirees who want to let us know where to stick it and that they deserve to continue to receive additional benefits beyond their COLA’s. Finally, we hear from widows of retirees and officers who suffered line-of-duty deaths who depend on their pensions and they are scared to death that something bad is going to happen.

We pay attention to those calls and what we have attempted to relay to all of the various interests who have a stake in what is going on with respect to any matter associated with our pension, is that we are protected by state law and regardless of what the mayor has placed in the public domain through his comments to the press about what changes should be imposed, it is not his decision to unilaterally make. The meet-and-confer process is in place for the mayor and our pension trustees to utilize to make mutually agreed upon changes to our pension plan. As a reminder, HPOPS is the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for all of us when it concerns pension issues. If that process is not successfully utilized, the last recourse for any changes is the Texas Legislature.

With respect to matters associated with the issue of pensions, possible changes to the system, and the various concerns of active officers, retired officers, as well as widows of retirees and slain officers, the following is the position of the HPOU:

The HPOU supports the board of trustees at HPOPS to fairly and professionally analyze and work out needed solutions with the administration that will resolve the funding issues associated with our pension fund’s long-term viability and solvency. To that end, we support HPOPS trustees’ decision to file their suit against the city in order to make sure that the state-mandated funding component that protects our fund is complied with. The issue of properly funding our pension fund was addressed in 1998 by our pension trustees with the city and, in that process, we believe that they (HPOPS) was more than fair in their agreement to enable the city to prepare for the required 16% funding provision by allowing the city to gradually ease into it over a nearly six-year period.

We know that there could likely be other reasons why the fund is not as healthy as it should be, however, we do know one of the reasons that it is in its present state is because our pension trustees bent over backwards to help the city over a six-year period. That being said, it is time for the administration and our pension trustees to sit down and earnestly move forward in a confidential setting to reasonably deal with the very real funding problems. To HPOU, reasonable solutions do not involve the following:

At this point, it is fair game to point out that we have had some very serious differences with some of the decisions that HPOPS has made in the past with respect to how additional pension benefits for officers who were retired from HPD were continually enhanced. Our opposition was based on the fact that one day, we knew that the chickens would come home to roost as it related to benefit costs and who would be left behind to pay the tab. The fact is that there is now no turning back. Regardless of our past differences, we must move forward together. Our responsibility as a Union is not to take benefits away from active or retired officers. Our responsibility is to protect and defend, not only what we have negotiated via the meet-and-confer process, but also protect and defend the meet-and-confer process for our pension benefits, which fall under HPOPS responsibility. Therefore, other than mentioning the past differences for benchmark purposes only, we are determined to put the past behind us and support our pension trustees 100% to protect and repair the problems associated with our fund’s current situation. We have taken the position from the beginning that if we have to fight, we will take our fight to Austin where our resources can be better utilized and we have a distinct advantage. For those few of you who have been considering dropping out of PAC…now is not the time to make that type of foolish decision but rather, you should be signing officers up.

Mayor White and Our Pension Fund

Before leaving this particular subject, I want to take a moment to clarify our position with respect to Mayor White’s public negotiation attempts. We feel it has been an unnecessary and very harmful strategy employed thus far by the mayor to publicly float out his pension repair proposals that have no chance in the world of being implemented. Once again, any changes that could possibly be agreed to would involve participative negotiations with our pension trustees directly through the meet-and-confer process or directly with members of the Texas Legislature and our pension trustees during the 2005 legislative session in Austin. With that being said, members of the pension fund must also realize that the health and long-term solvency of the fund should and must be our first priority.

We have met with Mayor White several times over the past several weeks about this and other matters and we (Ronny Martin, Mark Clark, and myself) informed him in our last face-to-face meeting on Tuesday, July 6 that he was not helping himself or us in our efforts to retain officers’ confidence if he continued to publicly feud with our pension trustees. I specifically told him that if he wanted us to move forward with any effort to devise any extension to our current meet-and-confer agreement with the city that would take us through his entire term in office, he must back off any effort to push a 25-year retirement for any current HPD officer. He was also told that if he did not, we would begin to take our private disagreements with him public (which would not be productive for any of us in the short or long run). I also informed him that due to officers’ perception of his comments in the press related to our pension benefits, more and more of them were beginning to refer to him as Mayor White-Mire. Finally, I asked him to quit saying that he could pay for the pay raise or the increased pension contributions. I advised him that he has no choice but to honor both legally binding agreements.

The mayor responded that he understood our concerns and the problems the issue was causing for all officers at HPD. Furthermore, he committed to us that would back off of any effort to impose a 25-year retirement on current officers in order to help us possibly construct a meet-and-confer agreement extension. The mayor also confirmed that he was willing to meet with and listen to any alternative proposals or ideas that our pension trustees could come up with to work toward resolving the funding dilemma confronting the police pension fund. In defense of Mayor White, we must all remember that these are not issues and problems he has caused. Although his style is somewhat abrupt and has made people uncomfortable, we must all remember that we should address the problems now with reasonable long-term solutions rather than allowing these issues to fester and waking up years from now with a letter in the mail advising us to hold off cashing that pension check because there is no money.

Following our meeting with Mayor White, we reached out to HPOPS Chairman Larry Doss to inform him of what we had discussed and advised him that the mayor was open to meeting with them and trying to figure out how solutions can be accomplished in the pension meet-and-confer process. We also informed HPOPS Chairman Larry Doss that, at this point, we were inclined to slow down our own meet-and-confer potential re-opener process until some positive signs of meaningful negotiation progress between the administration and HPOPS began to take place. In addition, we again offered our support to assist HPOPS in any helpful way possible via our line of communication with Mayor White and the city council. Larry was very appreciative and informed us that they were scheduled to meet with the city during the week of July 11 and that they had devised, what they believed to be, more reasonable solutions to fixing the funding problems of our pension plan and would offer them to the city for additional consideration. We found our separate conversations with Mayor White and Larry Doss to be encouraging and we are hopeful that sooner, rather than later, they will be able to sit down and come up with a workable meet-and-confer contract resolution that will protect officers’ benefits and the fund that provides them for all of us.

Possible Contract Re-Opener

The next matter I want to address was briefly mentioned in a previous paragraph and it is related to the possibility of reopening our meet-and-confer contract with the city. As we have shown in the past, the leadership at the HPOU has not been afraid to make decisions and explore options and scenarios that will benefit all of us in the long run. What has occurred so far is that we had met with Mayor White back in April regarding his concerns about how many officers would be leaving the department and what negative impact that would have on police staffing and the department’s ability to provide basic public safety services. Accordingly, we offered to craft some additional phase-down programs that would be so attractive to officers they would rather enter them as they exit the department which in turn would provide a more orderly exit of officers that in turn would enable the city to better plan for future staffing of the organization. We believed that the mayor’s request for help to develop a better staffing strategy related to retirements and hiring was worth sitting down and reviewing possibilities. As a result, before moving forward with any process, informed the HPOU board what we were doing and received authority to move forward with the goal of trying to build additional attractive phase-down programs for officers. Over the past three months, we (HPOU) have met with the administration’s negotiators to craft potential changes to our current contract. During this process, we (HPOU) began to devise some other changes that may be considered as well. Changes such as adding additional years to the contract with additional raises and possibly devising ways to fund some additional academy classes and officer overtime programs to deal with the growing attrition rate in our department.

Unfortunately, during the week of June 27, an unauthorized draft proposal from the administration, and I might add unacceptable proposal to the HPOU, was circulated throughout the department. As a result, the frustration levels of officers, which were already high due to the pension controversy, shot through the roof. Accordingly, we have spent a tremendous amount of time hearing from officers who want to know what is going on.

First, it is important to emphasize that the draft that was circulated is not something we were agreeing to with the city. There have been approximately a dozen different drafts due to the fact that each time we meet, things change significantly just like they have in past meet-and-confer contract negotiations. What is important for all officers to understand is that we are not going to bring anything to them for a ratification vote that is not an improvement of our current contract. If our process of considering a re-opener that adds more years and money to our current agreement as well as more phase-down options comes to a tentative agreement, then we will need to make sure that comprehensive educational meetings are planned so that officers, especially those officers who are contemplating retirement, have every opportunity to understand how to utilize the new phase-down options to their personal financial benefit. Furthermore, when the HPOPS issues are put back on track, and we decided to move forward with a better proposal for officers to vote on, we want to make sure that officers understand the strategy involved in how any contract extension beyond the scheduled January ‘07 expiration date and the accompanying base pay raises are structured.

What we are looking at with respect to structure is to make the unprecedented effort to mandate immediate academy classes to hire more officers and additional overtime programs to facilitate the growing staffing problem we have at HPD. This is being looked at by HPOU because we are very concerned about the staffing condition of our department and what that means with respect to turning officers’ worlds upside down with assignment, shifts, and days off changes and, more importantly, officer safety as it relates to having proper backup.

Recent administrative decisions have resulted in the redeployment of officers to the jail as well as within various divisions throughout the department. The fact of the matter is that there has been a need for a long time to make some tough decisions regarding properly staffing patrol and prioritizing how and what type of calls the department responds to as well as figuring out how important investigative resources can better be utilized in a shrinking department. We, as a union, feel we have a responsibility to do our part to come up with workable and relevant solutions to these problems. To that end, we are prepared to devise strategies within the four corners of our meet-and-confer agreement that not only address compensation increases but also working conditions and officer safety concerns.

It is very important to note that no agreement has been made with respect to saying we have a new deal and that we are ready to take that deal to officers via the contract ratification process to vote on. Before we can come to an agreement, positive progress in the negotiation process with our pension trustees will need to take shape. Furthermore, it will only take place following the public assurances of Mayor White that his recommendation to impose 25-year retirement on HPD officers with 15 or less years will no longer be considered or pursued in any venue. Then, and only then, will we move forward with any contract improvements for HPD officers.

In closing, we are hopeful that this correspondence addresses the ever-changing issues that are confronting all of us on a daily basis. It is worth noting that, as your elected president since the inception of meet-and-confer, all of us have prospered and experienced unprecedented compensation and benefit increases since 1998. For example, a ten-year police officer’s salary has increased 100%. A 20-plus year officer’s salary has increased 60%. Supervisors at all ranks have actually matched or surpassed the markets in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin with which they are compared. HPD officers of all ranks who have been hired since September 1, 1985 have been placed into the same lucrative vacation and sick time (PTO) benefit program as officers hired before them which will enable them to have a substantial cash value to all of their accumulated time rather than losing it when they retire. The list of accomplishments goes on and on and every officer has benefited greatly. With that said, if we do move forward with any new provisions to our meet-and-confer agreement, they, too, will only be improvements.

The HPOU

I would respectively ask that each of you, as members of the HPOU, take a moment to reflect on our accomplishments and remember that we are here to protect the interests of officers and their families. Our efforts on behalf of HPD officers have not diminished in any way. We are accomplishing the goals of representing your interests within the bargaining and political process. Our restraint from making certain declarations and comments in the press should not be taken as a sign of any weakness or reluctance to fight. Let me reassure those of you that don’t know me very well, I will fight, as will the board of the HPOU, any person or organization who tries to harm officers or their families. We are accomplishing our goals and we are legitimately viewed by our members, elected officials throughout the state and other labor organizations as one of the premier police unions in the nation. Our strength is in our members and it is also in our ability to recognize and understand public policy and budgeting so that we can do something more than yell, scream, and shout. Results are the bottom line and I want each and every member to understand that at the beginning, middle, and end of the day, we are on the side of the officer against all comers.

Hans Marticiuc, President

News Archives