Thirty-two of the forty-two pension funds that pay Texas city firefighters have never adopted the funding plan state law has required of them and their city halls since 2021 — and the state board that watches them does not hold it against them, because lawmakers never set a date.
What the law asks for is not elaborate. A local retirement fund and the city that sponsors it have to jointly “develop and adopt a written funding policy that details a plan for achieving a funded ratio of the system that is equal to or greater than 100 percent” — a document, signed by both, saying how the fund gets to where it can cover everything it has promised. The word carrying the weight is “jointly”.
Without one, the two halves decide apart: the city sets what it puts in, and the firefighters, through their own pension board, set what comes out of each paycheck and what gets paid in retirement. Chief actuary David Fee told the State Pension Review Board on Sept. 30 what that produces: “So without a long-term joint funding agreement, contribution and benefit decisions become disjointed.” A city cutting its contribution the same year the fund plans to raise benefits; a bad year on the markets in which each side waits for the other.
Ten of the 42 funds have something binding in writing. Fee put the rest at 32 and named some: Abilene, Brownwood and Greenville, the worst funded of the group, and Corpus Christi. These are the retirement funds of working firefighters in those cities, and of the people already drawing pensions from them.
One member asked how long the requirement had been law. Since 2021, Fee said. “Wow,” came the reply from the table. Another asked for the names to be published: “Can we put the names on the list please?”
The gap is in the drafting. When the Legislature created the duty in 2019 it set a date: every system had to adopt a policy by Jan. 1, 2020. Two years later it rewrote the section to make the policy a joint one, and attached no new date. The only clock left starts after the signing — a copy must reach the board “not later than the 31st day after the date the policy or change, as applicable, is adopted” (Government Code §802.2011). Nothing says when to adopt.
Pressed on whether the missing date had become the reason not to sign, Fee said its absence is why staff do not record the 32 as “a severe non-compliance issue.” An hour later, arguing over whether untrained trustees should lose their votes, a member drew the same lesson: “because statute doesn’t have an effective date, people don’t comply.” Another put it flatter.
“If there is no deadline, there is no deadline and people don’t meet them.”
None of which means the board is presiding over a wreck, and the same report that produced the 32 is the best argument against alarm. Texas local pension funds are in their strongest shape in a decade: 44 now expect to clear their debts within 15 years, against 24 in 2020, and the number needing more than 30 years has fallen from 36 to eight and, Fee said, “it’s really down to two” — one of them the teacher retirement system, whose payoff period the Dispatch reported stretching to 35 years in September. No Texas system is currently under a state-ordered recovery plan. A member noted what the averages hide: 10 plans are still less than half funded, and in 11 the employer’s share of each year’s newly earned benefits runs under 1 percent of pay — members, that member said, largely fund their own pensions.
What the board will do about the missing signatures is less than it sounds. A member said it “needs to be a priority for this board to propose legislation, recommend legislation for the 2029 session to clear this up.” Another agreed that 2029 is a long way off and had a blunter message for the funds and cities in the meantime — “It is a law. It’s not a choice” — and told them to get it done. No vote was taken, and 2029 is the session after next.
The session that opens in January will get less from this board than planned. Before the actuarial report began, the chair pulled its recommendations on recovery plans for underfunded systems off the agenda, saying staff expect no system to need legislative changes this session; the trustee-training recommendations went to December. Nobody, in the room or outside it, has publicly defended or explained the 32; when the 2021 bill was heard it drew a single registered opponent and no recorded reasons. The board reports to lawmakers in November and meets again Dec. 10.
Should an untrained trustee lose the vote? The board spent 40 minutes on whether to ask lawmakers to suspend the voting rights, officer eligibility or board seat of a pension trustee who has not completed the state’s minimum training — seven hours in the first year, two a year after, all available online. One member argued a small fund that cannot find trustees willing to do seven hours “shouldn’t be running a pension plan”; the chair warned that stripping a seat could cost a small board its quorum and leave investment votes legally exposed. A financial penalty was floated and resisted. No vote; it returns in December with the annual compliance list. Recovery-plan rules adopted. Amendments to the board’s rules on funding soundness restoration plans passed on a voice vote with no questions asked and no formal public comment ever filed. A departure. Members read a resolution honoring Amy Cardona, executive director since May 2022, whose last day the chair said was Sept. 25. Deputy director Ashley Rendon is interim director and will run the agency through the session; no search committee until December.