Retired Officers Lose Fight Against City
A federal court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by four retired Chattanooga police officers and firefighters that challenged the city’s decision to reduce the cost-of-living adjustments to their pensions.
U.S. District Court Judge Curtis Collier granted the city’s motion for summary judgment in a decision issued Tuesday.
In 2014, the City Council voted to reduce the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for retired police officers and firefighters from a guaranteed annual 3 percent rate to an average of 1.5 percent, depending on the level of benefits a retiree was receiving. Reducing the cost-of-living adjustment level was part of a package of reforms produced by an 18-member task force Berke set up to reduce the city’s $150 million unfunded pension liability and address what the mayor said was an increasingly unsustainable city contribution to the pension fund.
The reform also increased employees’ pension contributions by nearly 40 percent, while saving the city more than $227 million over the next 24 years, the mayor’s office said.
In response, two retired firefighters and two retired police officers filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming that the city was taking away a vested financial interest they felt was promised to them.
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