On Thursday morning, Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio sent a letter to Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne urging him to investigate the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. In his letter, DiCiccio writes that PSPRS, “illegally granted pay raises of up to 27% to five investment staff employees without the approval of the state Department of Administration, as required by law.”
Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic reported that the “Trust administrator Jim Hacking acknowledged Tuesday that PSPRS gave the pay raises without the approval of the state Department of Administration, as required by law. Trust officials refused to say who authorized the pay increases, but Hacking has final authority in all personnel decisions.”
Now, DiCiccio wants to know who authorized the pay increases and wants “appropriate disciplinary and legal actions be taken.”
Under the leadership of Mayor Greg Stanton, integrity of process has deteriorated. Earlier this month, the Mayor instructed staff to not answer questions about conflicts-of-interest. DiCiccio, in a newsletter this week told constituents, “The conflict of interest by government staff has been ignored by the local media. City Staff are direct beneficiaries of the current system that THEY helped write reports for, hire consultants for, hire attorneys for, and made presentations for which blasted the citizens pension reform initiative.”
“The City of Phoenix Employees Retirement Board (COPERS), made up of direct beneficiaries of the pension scheme include the anti-pension reform co-chair, current city staff, City of Phoenix retirees, and one citizen not tied to the system. They used your money to give the guidelines, prepare the reports and then used those same reports in a public setting all with taxpayer money,” wrote DiCiccio.
Robert Robb, a columnist for the Arizona Republic wrote, Mayor Greg Stanton and the five council members “have betrayed the voters and dishonored themselves,” in their attempt to adopted “propagandistic ballot language” for Proposition 401. The proposition would change Phoenix’s pension program for new hires to a 401(k) style plan.
Robb writes:
City police and firefighters aren’t part of the city retirement system. They are part of a state-administered plan.
The initiative plainly states that it doesn’t affect the pension plan for cops and firefighters. The intent section declares it and the substantive sections are written to apply only to city-administered pension programs.
Yet the ballot language adopted by the council says that, if Prop. 401 is adopted, the city would be forbidden to make pension contributions to the state system for cops and firefighters.
The legal argument that the initiative could be read to have this effect is severely tortured. It’s not even what the lawyers call a colorable argument. It relies on extreme pettifogging.
The pension situation has been an ongoing nightmare.
DiCiccio advises Horne, “Such mishandling of state funds is unacceptable at any time, but it is particularly offensive during this period in which the state and cities are finding it difficult to provide fundamental government services like police protection due to budget shortfalls. The fact that our capitol building has been sold to an outside party due to Arizona’s financial straits is testament to the gravity of our situation. Every taxpayer dollar matters, and while I am pleased to learn that the illegal raises have been halted, this measure is not nearly enough. On behalf of the taxpaying citizens of Arizona, we must insist on recovering the improperly granted money without delay.
DiCiccio asks the Attorney General to “take measures to immediately return those taxpayer dollars that were illegally granted as pay raises,… takes steps to identify the person or persons responsible for granting these pay raises. And, to determine if those individuals knowingly granted those pay raises contrary to state law.”
DiCiccio concludes, “Confidence in public officials to do their duty honestly and to safeguard the interests of the people is fundamental to our system of government. The PSPRS violated that trust, but swift action by your office to recover those funds will help to restore a measure of the trust that was lost.”
Horne’s office will likely do nothing. It has virtually no history of fighting government corruption, but its own history of corruption is legendary.