The chair of the city council's finance committee is telling the city manager and public safety unions to speed up pension reform negotiations.
Kansas City's pension funds for public safety workers are underfunded by more than 20 percent. Finance diirector Randall Landes pegs the shortage for the defined benefit plans at $500 million. And finance chair Jan Marcason explained why she's asking city management and the unions to tentatively agree on a new plan before mid-October: "The time to address this isn't during a crisis. It's now when we're not necessarily in a crisis. But if we don't address it now, we could get there."
Marcason wants a firm a plan to vote on before serious discussions of next year's budget begin.
The unions have so far remained cool to City manager Troy Schulte's proposal: higher employee contributions, partly-guaranteed benefits, ending guaranteed cost of living increases, and a less generous system for new employees.