Nutter Calls For DROP To Be Abolished
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 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.
Time to DROP Nutter— drbob1- brotherman1,i bet you when it's time for "NUT" (nutter) to leave he will sign up too.— brotherman1
- Nutter is right...drop DROP and fire city council and the other drones in city hall....they are good for nothing leeches on the system and they are bleeding the city dry......— nuggett
Comment removed.- Don't re-elect ANY OF THESE BUMS...TERM LIMITS IMPOSED BY THE PEOPLE!!!— johnhenry
- I think th council will let it stay since it has big benefits for those who will retire, despite the mayors insistence on dropping the DROP program Leads (HTML deleted)— gmatrixlead
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- the intellect displayed on philly.com explains a lot about the politicians elected here. The council we have is a reflection of the citizens of this city and when you read the garbage posted here (yes I know many of the posters no longer live in the city) everything makes perfect sense.— Yakov
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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
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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
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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
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