Jacksonville's Retirement Reform Task Force has accepted an offer by The Pew Charitable Trusts to help develop a proposal to fix the city's problems with the Police and Fire Pension fund. Pew is offering it's services at no cost to the city.
A labor backed group called the National Public Pension Coalition has criticized Pew's pension reform efforts saying it been harming retirees and state and municipal employees. Task force chair Bill Scheu says the complaints come from an unhappy minority who haven't gotten their way.
Scheu says Pew has an excellent reputation on non-partisan and comprehensive expertise on pension reform.
Scheu says the entire process of the task force will be open to the public and all parties effected will be involved in the process. The biggest hurdle is how to pay the city's legal obligation of $1.7 billion dollar unfunded liability to the fund.
Scheu says he hopes to have a final recommendation prepared in January.
