City Director Joan Adcock and our Police Pension Board

For those of our membership who may not know or have not noticed, City Director Joan Adcock has attended both our Pension Board Funding Committee meetings as well as our Pension Board meetings for the past several months.  Thus, I believe this report to our membership is probably overdue. 

Ms. Adcock’s attendance at those meetings began after her surprise appearance at our General Membership Meeting on August 8, 2011, when she spoke to our membership in favor of the City’s sales tax proposal and offered her services to assist our pension membership.  As you probably know, her presentation and offer of assistance successfully resulted in a vote of our membership to support the City’s sales tax and forego the support of our board’s counter proposal.  At that time, I only knew Ms. Adcock from previous press reports and, quite honestly, was rather skeptical of her claim to help us; however, the vote of our membership was unquestionably clear.

At that time, all I really knew about Ms. Adcock was that she was an influential member of the City’s Board of Directors and the only one who had the nerve to actually speak to our pension membership at that very pivotal time which indicated, at least to me, her strong conviction to represent all the citizens of Little Rock, including our pension membership.  Subsequent to that vote of our membership, she agreed to participate in our pension board’s funding committee meetings and I anxiously waited to see if she would honor that commitment and provide her assistance to our pension fund.

At the next funding committee meeting that she attended, I was immediately impressed by her willingness to listen to our concerns and ask relevant questions about them.  She also kept copious notes from that and other meetings that she later placed into a three ring binder along with the handouts, spreadsheets, and other information we provided her.  What became even more amazing to me in subsequent meetings was that she actually seemed to have reviewed and studied those documents and notes as was evidenced by her increased understanding and knowledge of our pension fund.  Although she had only originally committed to attend our Funding Committee meetings, Ms. Adcock also attended and became a welcome participant in each of our regular pension board meetings as well.  That fact provided further evidence of her clear determination to learn as much as possible about our pension fund.

From that first attendance, it has been undoubtedly clear that Ms. Adcock recognized the problem of living on a policeman’s pension without any cost of living increase and providing a workable solution to that problem immediately became her primary concern.  Consequently with her help and assistance, we have examined several methods of providing relief to our membership to alleviate some of their current financial strain without causing unnecessary expense to the City.  While our primary objective has been obtaining an eventual merger with LOPFI with a cost of living adjustment, other proposed methods have also been examined in an effort to provide our membership with some relief until that merger can be achieved.  While I have mentioned each of those methods in previous articles on this website before, I believe they bear repeating along with some new information about each.

Among those methods examined, is the possibility of establishing a City “supplement fund” program whereby our membership may receive a payment or payments from the City of funds not specifically designated for our pension fund but instead allocated for our membership from a special account to be established by the City similar to those funds currently received twice a year by our membership from the State supplement fund.  Because such “supplement fund” payments are NOT a portion of our memberships’ pension benefits, they would not require prior approval by the PRB.  Thus, such payments could provide our membership with some modest relief to their current financial strain.

In order to fund such a City “supplement fund” program, we are examining two possibilities.  The first and most probable is to use the onetime payment of $460,000 the City has already committed to pay this year to make up for its past failure to collect probation fees for our pension fund even though those funds are probably outside the State’s statute of limitations.  Because those funds are outside the State’s statute of limitations and that onetime payment would not have any significant effect on our actuarial soundness, it was acknowledged by the PRB Actuary that those funds may be available for that purpose.  Thus, it is our belief that those funds may be placed anywhere we may wish which, in this particular case, would be into the proposed supplement fund.

While those funds would not provide long-term financing for the supplement program or even be partially available until mid-year, they may at least provide the quickest and least problematic method of providing some important relief for our membership until such long-term funding may be achieved.  The only thing that would seem to be required to provide that particular supplement would be the creation of a separate City account for that purpose were those funds would be deposited and the agreement of the City to disburse those funds to our membership as may be approved.

With regard to the possible long-term funding of that supplement program, we are also examining the second and much more problematic possibility that the City agree to collect warrant and subpoena fees, as is currently authorized by Arkansas law [A.C.A. §§ 14-52-202 and 21-6-502] but are not being collected, and contribute those amounts collected from such fees into the “supplement fund” program or our pension fund.  As has been previously mentioned in other articles on this website, obtaining such funding would not cost the City any additional amount from their budget and would only require that a “policy decision” be made by the Little Rock City Board of Directors that such fees were to be collected and deposited into a separate account for that purpose and/or directly into our pension funds.  As I am certain you can imagine, this is where our relationship with City Director Adcock is important and she has certainly shown a keen interest in supporting that suggestion by tirelessly working with us toward its attainment.

Just last year, the courts of the City of Little Rock issued 11,488 warrants and the LRPD actually served 5,881 of those warrants that had the potential of netting $294,050 if the City had collected the $50 warrant fee allowed by law.  Of course, if the defendant was found “not guilty” or if the City could not collect the total fees from the defendant for some reason, no fee or only a partial fee may be available.  While those facts could reduce the total amount of fees collected for served warrants, many warrants contain multiple charges against a defendant but many other jurisdictions require a separate warrant for each charge and there is no reason why the City of Little Rock could not be among them.  Obviously, if the City were to also establish that policy, the revenue from those warrant fees could be expected to increase dramatically.  A fee of $30 is also authorized by law for the service of each subpoena [A.C.A. § 21-6-307] that could be included in the “supplement fund” program; however, there are no available figures on the total number of subpoenas served at this time but that number should be much larger than the number of warrants served and could provide additional funding for this program or our pension fund.

Thus at the very least and only as an example of what may be possible, some amount under the $294,050 would probably have been available for our proposed “supplement fund” program or our pension fund had the City simply agreed to that policy and collected those fees for that purpose last year.  By using only a generous approximation of our fund’s membership and only the warrants served in 2011 as an example, it should be evident that there would likely have been sufficient funds generated from that source to at least pay our membership the equivalent of $50 per month in two supplemental payments of $300 each that would have cost a total of approximately $180,000 per year had such a policy been in effect for last year.

Finally on both of those possible methods, there are “wrinkles” to be ironed out and obstacles yet to be overcome.  At least right now, it appears likely that the first option concerning the $460,000 may result in a temporary supplement fund to our membership.  However, the second and more problematic option concerning the warrant and subpoena fees will first require additional examination by your board and the PRB Actuary to determine if that source of possible recurring revenue may sufficiently reduce the time necessary for our possible merger with LOPFI with a COLA, if such additional funding were to be approved by the City.  Thus, through the dedicated work of your pension board members and the assistance of Ms. Adcock, it now appears likely that at least some much needed relief for our membership may soon be forthcoming, in one way or another, and that our merger with LOPFI with a COLA may possibly be on the not too distant horizon for our pension fund.

In conclusion, the unselfish decision of City Director Joan Adcock to assist our pension fund membership has been a breath of fresh air to our pension board and has helped to create at least some renewed trust in our City Directors and city government that has been far too long absent from our pension meetings.  While our relationship with Ms. Adcock has not yet produced any tangible results for our membership, her assistance on the above matters is sufficient reason for our pension membership to be cautiously optimistic and ALL of our membership now owe Ms. Adcock their gratitude, thanks, and support for her serious and sincere efforts to help us.