Nutter Calls For DROP To Be Abolished
Get inside the halls of Philadelphia power with PhillyClout: Inside City Hall, the blog by the Philadelphia Daily News' city hall reporters.
Nutter Calls For DROP To Be Abolished
Catherine Lucey
Armed with a new study which says the Deferred Retirement Option Plan has cost the city $258 million over ten years, Mayor Nutter today called for the abolishment of the program.
Nutter said he would transmit legislation to City Council to do away with DROP. "It is time to drop DROP," he said. "We cannot afford it. We cannot afford this program any longer and it must go."
Municipal union leaders said Nutter should leave DROP alone.
"Just because the politicians are in it, it shouldn’t be killed," said Bill Gault, president of Local 22 of the International Association of Fire Fighters. "This is an advantage to uniformed officers."
And John McNesby, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, said he wants the program to stay.
"It’s meaningless, it’s nonsense. We should have brownouts at the mayors office," McNesby said, noting that the police contract reached in December includes mentions of DROP. "We’re not even going to entertain this. It’s part of our contract and we’ll speak to him in 4 or 5 years."
While referenced in the contract, the DROP program is not detailed as a guaranteed benefit to workers.
Introduced by then-Mayor Rendell in 1999, DROP lets city workers set a retirement date up to four years in advance. At that point, their pension benefit is frozen and they start accruing pension payments in an interest-bearing account. Workers then receive those payments in a lump sum when they retire. The original goal of the program was to keep valuable employees on the job longer and to allow the city to better plan for retirement.
Former Mayor Street tried to kill the program in 2003 when the pilot program expired, saying it was too expensive, but the Pension Board voted to maintain it. Street later signed up himself and left office with $450,000 in DROP cash. He's not the only elected official who has signed up. Six council members are currently enrolled -- and a loophole allows them to run for re-election and resign for a day to get their payout and then return to office, a practise that has drawn public scorn.
The state legislature has passed legislation banning future elected officials from deferred retirement programs.
@ Sick-of-It: The state attorney general is too busy campaigning, suing the government and insulting unemployed people to actually do his job. I wouldn't have even bothered contacting him.— kim batiste fan- Police and fire unions say don't end DROP, but are they saying were the money for it will come from!!!— TEEBEES
- Christie is the last thing this city needs. Yeah, let's attack the budget deficit by slashing programs for education & basic services for the poor and give away huge tax breaks to the top 5% earners. Brilliant! Drop DROP today and make all new hires contribute to their 501K plans just like they do in the private sector.— F. Harry Stowe
- Stop all defined Pensions. This country can not afford them. Let them enroll in 401ks Self funded IRA'S. We need to STOP IT.— UnionsSuck
- Once again he will fail. 'we cannot afford it.' Just like you cannot afford alll the new hires, increasing the number of employees by over 1000 person in the upcoming years? C'mon, get off it. Stop saying this when your budget is in black and white and shows all the new hires, no cuts.— uandwhosearmy
- The Usual Suspects, money hungry Democrats, Rendell and Nutter; they can’t spend your money fast enough. DROP, DRPA, Ackerman, Barnet, 7% Sales tax, Pension Deficits,$95K city council Aides, Highest City Wage Tax in the Country… Get the Picture, these guys love your money, don’t love you, but they love your money. Keep voting for the One Party System, it works very well, for them!— CrashTestCorzine
- This is one of the biggest legal scams ever perpetrated on the city and probably the worst thing Rendell ever did. Street opposed this obvious ripoff at first (what's that saying about trying to con a con man?), then because he sees everyone is going to scam the city anyway (there wasn't enough outrage - we the people have mainly just stood here and taken it) so he rips off the city using the program for himself to the tune of $450,000 dollars - this tells it all. Thank you Mayor Nutter for FINALLY getting around to this, I thought you were going to let me and the city down but it seems you are making an effort to keep your promise. That the union chiefs take such an arrogant stance on something that is merely mentioned but not guaranteed in their contracts speaks to how out of touch they are with reality and how much power we have allowed them to amass. While every other pension plan in this country was decimated or eliminated, these crooks devised a way for the figureheads of the city payrolls to get obscene paydays. Get rid of this scam!— Twocents
Comment removed.
Mayor Nutter; From your mouth to Councils' ear; Kill DROP! It's election time you idiots....— The Monk- Abolish DROP, then the Arlen Specter Mausoleum.— The Monk
Breaking News: City Hall is the new BadLands. Sex, Drugs and Thieves.- The funniest part of this story is the mention of "valuable employees." Please, this is the city of Philadelphia you are talking about, there is no such thing.— reader747
jp85, your death sentence speaks loudly about you and your politics of death. Death panels, death taxes, death sentences, better dead than red, the republicans are truly the party of death and the fabricated wars of choice and unending increasing spending on the military to kill and be killed all for your political privilege and entertainment. And now, early death in retirement as all pensions and social security are targeted for looting and liquidation, giving all of the elderly a death sentence to poverty. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY MUST BE DESTROYED.- I am not defending them...BUT KEEP IN MIND, it is THEIR money! They have paid into the pension plan and DROP is just an advance while they FREEZE their pension increase. Its not right that you can quit for a day and come back though— Young Black Male
- This program was designed for the hardworking workers who put in their many years of service. It was NOT designed for the greedy politicians who found a way to corrupt this program. Vote OUT any politician who has taken advantage of this program, and vote out Nutter. How dare he cry while he pays his many unnecessary "deputy mayors", high paid school board spvrs and many "consultants".— badsaint
Follow Chris on Twitter
David Gambacorta spent a small eternity writing about cops, drug dealers and serial killers. Now he’s writing about power and politics – which sometimes reminds him of the old crime beat. He joined the Daily News in 2005. And yes, he knows you’re not quite sure how to pronounce his last name. E-mail tips to gambacd@phillynews.com
Follow Dave on Twitter.
Jan Ransom, a native New Yorker, joined the Daily News in 2010 after graduating from Howard University. She has since written about the difficulty of filing police complaints, tax deadbeats and life after violent home invasions. She joined the Daily News City Hall Bureau in 2011 and has plunged headfirst into reporting on administration budget battles and City Council shenanigans. E-mail tips to ransomj@phillynews.com
Follow Jan on Twitter
Sean Collins Walsh is from Bucks County and went to Northwestern University. He joined the Daily News copy desk in 2012 and now covers the Nutter administration. Before that, he interned at papers including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Seattle Times. E-mail tips to walshSE@phillynews.com
Follow Sean on Twitter
