It was a couple of days before the Jacksonville City Council had to decide on a potential tax increase to help fill a $61 million gap in the upcoming budget.
Mayor Alvin Brown was adamantly opposed to raising taxes and pointed to his pension deal that would save $1.2 billion over 30 years. That vote wasn?t anticipated for at least another month.
But council President Bill Gulliford wanted members to make a decision Tuesday so they could move forward with budget decisions.
The pension bill was sitting in the Finance Committee, where it was expected to stay for at least a couple of weeks. But Gulliford decided to pull it so the full council could vote, something Brown?s chief of staff Chris Hand call a ?procedural sneak attack.?
Gulliford told few people in hopes of preventing Brown?s staff from heavily lobbying the council.
?I figured the administration was going to go and beat them to death the minute they got wind of it,? Gulliford said the day after the vote.
By Monday evening, the administration had heard. Hand called Gulliford and said the move was ?premature,? based on the work still to be done by the Finance Committee and the pension review task force appointed by Brown.
Hand told Gulliford, ?This is the kind of thing that doesn?t help to build bridges between the administration and City Council.?
But Gulliford thought the pension deal wasn?t good enough, and he was especially concerned about the unfunded liability. He thought the city could do better.
Brown?s staff spent much of Tuesday lobbying council members to keep the pension bill in the Finance Committee and to allow the pension task force to continue its review.
The mayor even visited the council offices Tuesday afternoon, something Councilman John Crescimbeni said wasn?t common.
Members of the Fraternal Order of Police and firefighters union also made calls and the rounds at City Hall.
But by 8:26 p.m. Tuesday, Brown?s platform was on the losing end of two major votes. The council approved a potential tax increase and his much-touted pension reform bill was dead.
Finance Chair Greg Anderson called it ?political drama, Jacksonville style.?
Major concerns
The Tuesday vote wasn?t the first time the council had heard major concerns about Brown?s pension deal, which came as a surprise to many when it was announced by Brown at a May 8 news conference.
Two influential groups ? the JAX Chamber and the Jacksonville Civic Council ? encouraged the council to vote against the pension bill.
Some council members still had questions about the pension bill and felt strongly that a vote shouldn?t be taken Tuesday night.
?The more I listened, the more I felt that it was right to put it back into committee and hold off a bit,? said Councilman Don Redman. But when he had to make a decision Tuesday night, he was among the 11 who rejected the plan.
Councilman Warren Jones was one of seven who voted in favor of it. ?Those of us who were not prepared to vote were forced to make a choice,? he said.
Bill Scheu, whom Brown appointed to head the pension task force, was unhappy when he heard Gulliford was pushing for a vote Tuesday. He said it was ?an attack on the mayor? in an email to Hand, which the chief of staff distributed to council members before the vote.
Gulliford publicly apologized to Scheu and the task force before the council voted.
Scheu was particularly disappointed with Gulliford.
?He abruptly changed course without even the courtesy of a call,? Scheu said in a Wednesday email to the Times-Union. ?That was astounding and disappointing to me, particularly given my earlier call to him about Council representation and my close relationship with his family. Truly surprising, discourteous and hurtful.?
The task force met on July 10 and was scheduled to meet again July 31 and Aug. 22.
But Scheu said he doesn?t think the task force needs to meet now. He doesn?t think the task force has any future role in continued conversation on pension reform.
Times-Union writer Steve Patterson contributed to this report.
mary.palka@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4107
topher.sanders@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4169
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