A.G. Gancarski
One of the many hot-button issues during the Jacksonville mayoral campaign between Lenny Curry and Alvin Brown was whether or not Mayor Brown would take a pension from the Florida Retirement System.
As Nate Monroe of the Florida Times-Union reported in March, Mayor Brown’s office had said that he had “enrolled in the plan without realizing that taxpayers” were also contributing to the sum.
“After researching the issue, Chief of Staff Chris Hand told council members… that state law will not allow Brown to leave the system until the end of his term in the summer of 2015,” Monroe wrote.
Well, Mayor Brown’s term has ended, and he is keeping his promise.
As Hand wrote in an email to a couple of city employees on Thursday, “Mayor Brown previously pledged that he would reimburse the City for whatever it had contributed to his Florida Retirement System (FRS) investment account between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2015. He has spoken with FRS, which told him that now that he has left office, the City can electronically debit its previous contributions from his FRS account with Mayor Brown’s authorization.”
The pension issue was one that the Curry campaign had capitalized on, via mailers from the PAC “Together for a Better Jacksonville.”
Updated 5:19 p.m:
Statement from former Mayor Alvin Brown:
