‘Unprecedented’ coalition supports Jacksonville’s pension reform referendum

File this under “How to make a closing argument for a citywide referendum, Jacksonville style.”

It was a few minutes before a noon presser with what Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry called an “unprecedented coalition” of people spanning both parties, every area of town, and all other markers of diversity.

Curry and former Mayor John Peyton talked to FloridaPolitics.com and WJXT about the symbolism of the day and what it augured for the push to get County Referendum 1 passed next Tuesday.

Peyton wasn’t talking to press just to pass the time. As he noted, he served from 2003 to 2011. When Peyton came in, the “pension bill” was $30 million a year; when he left, it was up to $150 million and was “gobbling up” resources in the general fund.

County Referendum 1 – which would authorize the city to extend the current Better Jacksonville Plan infrastructure tax out until 2060 to address the city’s $2.8 billion unfunded pension liability – is the proposed answer.

The community, says Peyton, has a “desperate need” for this revenue source, for this stemming of the tide of increased use of finite general fund money.

Countering the assertion that a sales tax punishes the poor, Peyton said it is “more fair” and “evenly distributed,” adding that when millage increased under his watch, people wondered why he couldn’t raise the sales tax instead.

This goes to show: you can’t make everyone happy.

“I commend the mayor for taking a stand,” Peyton said. “He put himself out there with a viable solution.”

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This pension liability was an issue that Peyton’s administration tried to handle, but then the Alvin Brown administration came in and had different ideas of how to resolve it.

“We sounded the alarm,” Peyton said, of the “declining revenue environment” and the apparent unsustainability of the pension scenario as early as 2007.

An unpopular move – a 2 percent pay cut for city employees, imposed in 2010 – followed.

Meanwhile, said Peyton, the city went “four years without a solution.”

“We’d have been in a different place had [Brown] adopted” the Peyton plan, the former mayor said.

And as a result, there have been existential impacts: from libraries to parks to public safety.

“It takes revenue to run a government, revenue to run a city,” Peyton said.

“The police force is really small,” Peyton said, comparing the JSO to other major cities, “yet we lead the state in murder.”

Peyton expressed admiration at Curry’s ability to get the legislation authorizing the referendum through Tallahassee – which was not a slam dunk by any means.

“I would have bet,” Peyton said, that “Mayor Curry wouldn’t have been successful.”

“If you can get it through the legislature,” Peyton said, “you can get it through the community.”

“I think this is going to pass by a larger margin,” than some people think, Peyton said.

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If that resounding victory should occur Aug. 30, it will be a collaborative effort. And the flowers of collaboration were in full bloom at noon in the city hall atrium, where roughly 50 civic leaders, including prominent Democrats like former city council president Eric Smith and Jimmy Midyette of the Jacksonville Coalition for Equality, assembled to lend a bipartisan imprimatur to the effort.

However, there may not have been a more significant bipartisan voice than Nat Glover, Jacksonville’s first African-American sheriff who Peyton beat in the 2003 mayoral race.

Glover called the pension issue a “personal issue,” one which has been discussed without a solution for over a decade.

“I want to thank this mayor for stepping up,” and showing the “courage to step up in his first term,” Glover said.

The time is now to pass it, Glover contended, noting that morale is low in the JSO and that when officers get 20 years of tenure, they “can’t wait for retirement.”

“The mayor stepped up with his plan, the governor approved, [and it’s now] time for you to step up and do the right thing,” Glover said.

Councilman Tommy Hazouri, a former Democratic mayor who features in pro-referendum television ads along with current Democratic Council VP John Crescimbeni, noted that “now is the time, now is the opportunity, because tomorrow might be too late.”

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After the presser, Curry held a wrap-up with the media, talking about the “cross section” of support represented at the Monday event.

This “unprecedented” coalition countered the naysayers of last week, a “small group that came out” without a “plan” or “answer” with “pot shots” at the “last minute.”

In addition to the coalition being unprecedented, Curry said the plan itself is also.

“Most cities,” Curry said, “ignore the issue [of unfunded pension liabilities] altogether,” sometimes offering a “populist message” to either raise taxes or cut to the bone.

Curry also contends that when he discusses this plan to address the matter with business executives, they want to know more.

“They’re unaware of any major city dealing with this issue. Other cities will look to us,” Curry predicted, for a way forward on pension liabilities.