Judge: City can change fire, police retirement system despite earlier ruling

Listen to this article

The city of Baltimore can proceed with a plan to implement cost-saving changes to the city’s Fire and Police Employees’ Retirement System, even though portions of the original ordinance previously have been deemed unconstitutional.

U.S. Senior District Court Judge Marvin J. Garbis said Friday that certain changes to the pension system can go forward despite his ruling in September that the way the city was attempting to calculate annual increases for retirees was unconstitutional.

The judge held in September that the city’s method for determining annual pension increases was not “reasonable and necessary to serve an important public interest,” and as a result held that the ordinance was an “unconstitutional impairment of the rights of members.”

Police and fire officials had argued that Garbis’ September decision meant that the entire law should be struck down, but the city argued that the cost-saving modifications to the pension system should be severed from the rest of the ordinance and allowed to remain as law.

Garbis ultimately sided with the city, saying the cost-saving modifications could be severed from the rest of the ordinance.

Ryan O’Doherty, a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, said in an emailed statement Monday that Garbis’ latest ruling makes clear that all of the pension reform effort is constitutional, with the one exception.

“This ruling makes clear that the plaintiffs’ assertion, that this single perceived defect invalidated the entire law, is incorrect,” he said.

Charles O. Monk III, a partner at Saul Ewing LLP in Baltimore who represents the plaintiffs, was not immediately available for comment.

In a separate decision, also released Friday, the judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim that, through the enactment of the ordinance, the city took the plaintiffs’ property without just compensation in violation of their due process rights under the “takings” clause of the Constitution.

Garbis said the “circumstances would render an award of legal fees to Plaintiffs for proceedings on the Takings Claim unjust,” and as a result dismissed as moot the second count of the plaintiffs’ complaint for declaratory, injunctive and monetary relief.

The decisions are the latest developments in the city’s police and firefighters’ class-action lawsuit challenging the ordinance. The case is likely to be appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

City Solicitor George Nilson said Friday in an emailed statement that the city is “pleased with the important and correct ruling on severability and appreciative to the judge for promptly resolving the other issues that could have delayed both parties in moving forward to a final appellate resolution of this case in the Fourth Circuit.”

In the lawsuit, which was filed in June 2010, the plaintiffs said the legislation would “drastically impair and diminish the benefits that were promised by the City under Article 22 of its Charter in exchange for years of dedicated service by the City’s public safety workers.”

Under the plan, firefighters and police officers must now contribute to the pension fund, and retired officers and firefighters also lost a “variable benefit.”

Those who have served the city for less than 15 years have also been told that they must serve 25 years instead of 20 years before being eligible for retirement.

The ordinance, however, has been touted by the mayor because it could save the city roughly $64 million a year.