The “Golden Calf” legislation of the PRB is now, finally, available for review as SB 181.  It has been suggested that it was “unfair” to use the “Golden Calf” analogy for this legislation; however, my point was that the Pension Review Board (PRB) constantly refused to even consider any other legislation that may have provided local pension fund members with a chance of obtaining legislative relief of various issues for fear that such legislation may interfere with this legislation that no member of the PRB had even read. [Read more...]

First, I need to tell our readers that the Arkansas Pension Review Board (PRB) had NO audio recording of the meeting to assist me with this report. For some unknown reason it failed to work and the PRB is in the process of securing additional recorders so that this does not reoccur in the future.  Consequently, the below report was made using my personal digital recorder placed in my shirt pocket during the meeting that covered only the first two hours of the PRB meeting. [Read more...]

The Attorney General has now issued its opinion number 2010-118 on the Guarantee Fund issue.  Needless to say, I strongly disagree with that opinion and will explain my reasons for such disagreement below.  While this opinion was not entirely unexpected, as I indicated in a previous article given the Democrat Governor’s interest in this matter to support his Arkansas State Police and the Democrat Attorney General, I was hoping for a more favorable and unbiased opinion from the Attorney General’s Office based on their past opinions of law in similar matters. [Read more...]

This is the third part of my multi-part series of articles on the last Meeting of the PRB.  Part 1 of this series involved the Approval of the March Minutes of the PRB and Part 2 involved the “unwritten” policy directive of the PRB on the Guarantee Fund issue.

I have delayed my article on the DROP issues in favor of this article, which I deem more important to the local fire and police pension funds administered by the PRB.

This is the second part of my multi-part series of articles on the last Meeting of the PRB.  Part 1 of this series involved the Approval of the March Minutes of the PRB.  Part 3 of this series will involve the discussion of the Little Rock Police Pension Board’s filing of an appeal on the DROP interest rates as provided by the PRB actuary and the statement to the PRB of our reasons for appeal of this matter by Board Treasurer Sara Lenehan.

Rather than present an extremely lengthy article on the September 1, 2010, meeting of the PRB that lasted approximately seven (7) hours, I have determined that a better approach would be to provide a weekly series of shorter articles on each topic discussed at that meeting to provide our readers the opportunity to be informed of those matters with the appropriate depth that each topic deserves.

To also provide a very brief announcement of future topics in this series, I shall now state that the PRB is currently awaiting an Attorney General’s Opinion on the Guarantee Fund issue [the second article in the series] and that the DROP interest issue has resulted in a determination by the PRB that it will allow correction to the 2008-2009 annual reports of the Little Rock Police Pension Fund that will enable them to pay the full interest rates expected by their DROP members [the third article in the series], as well as other articles of interest from the meeting. [Read more...]

During the June 2010 meeting of the PRB, Mr. Jody Carreiro, the PRB Actuary, stated, “As far as I know, I’m still Jody Carreiro and the actuary for this Board for the last twenty years” (00.17.21 into the June PRB audio).  Later in that meeting of the PRB, Mr. Lee Harrod asked (02.34.01 into the June PRB audio), if the Board could answer the question, in the next PRB meeting, of why it does not bid out the actuarial contract?  Mr. Lundy, the chairman of the PRB, said he could answer that question now and stated the Board did bid out the contract when they first changed to Mr. Carreiro because he was local and cheaper and just approved contract extensions every since.  When asked by Mr. Harrod how long ago that had been, Mr. Lundy said around twenty (20) years ago. [Read more...]

First, I wish to remind everyone who reads this article that I am NOT an attorney but am capable of reading and understanding Arkansas law.  My over twenty-three (23) years of service to the Little Rock Police Department coupled with my twenty (20) years of publishing the Arkansas Criminal Law Manual afforded me the opportunity to read numerous Acts and court decisions necessary to do my job, understand the law, and produce that publication.  With those facts stated, I will now continue with this article:

 The Arkansas Fire and Police Guarantee Fund (Guarantee Fund) was set up by the legislature in 1995 because some of the old “municipal fire and police pension funds may run out of funds before all of the promised benefits have been paid to their members, restraints, and beneficiaries” (A.C.A. § 24-11-209).  The Arkansas Fire and Police Pension review Board (PRB) was assigned to administer this Fund.

[Read more...]

First, let me state that despite what the readers of this website may think, I am growing weary of writing negative reviews of the actions of pension officials and really wish I had something positive to say about them; however, when I see something that is, in my opinion, so obviously not in the best interest of our police pension fund, I feel compelled to write about it.  Such was the case at the last meeting of the PRB.  If you do not care to know what happened, please do not read the rest of this article. [Read more...]

This Category has been added to keep our membership informed about the important things discussed at the Arkansas Pension Review Board (PRB) meetings.