The Metro Council is expected to vote at its meeting Wednesday on a proposal that lays out how St. George would pay off its share of city-parish pension debt should the incorporation effort succeed.
The measure came up at the council’s August meeting but was deferred at the request of St. George organizers, who had concerns about the proposal on the table.
Since then, however, attorneys for the proposed city and the city-parish retirement system, CPERS, have been meeting and appear to have come up with a framework both sides can live with, according to Metro Council member Dwight Hudson, whose district includes parts of St. George.
“They’ve done a lot of work on the ordinance to get it to where it is,” Hudson says. “I don’t know that both sides are one hundred percent satisfied, but I would say the vast majority of the ordinance is acceptable to both sides.”
Under the terms of the revised measure, a newly incorporated municipality—St. George—would have to pay CPERS its share of pension debt within two years of the date of incorporation. That’s a significant change because the original ordinance required the payment immediately upon incorporation, before St. George would have a chance to collect sales tax.
St. George’s pro-rata share of pension debt would be calculated from a formula based on revenue—specifically, the amount of St. George’s general fund revenues as a percentage of total city-parish general fund revenues. The original ordinance based the calculation of “all” revenues, which is a larger amount than general fund revenues and would have resulted in a higher liability for the new city.
Like the original ordinance, the new measure authorizes the CPERS actuary to determine the final amount of pension debt St. George would owe. But it would give St. George officials 30 days to review the data calculations and object, believing the required amount was incorrect. The original ordinance included no such provision.
As with the original ordinance, the new measure would allow the payment to be made at once or amortized over 15 years.
While several provisions were added to make the measure more amenable to St. George organizers, Hudson says many unanswered questions remain about how much liability St. George will have to assume from the city-parish should it become a reality when voters go to the polls this weekend.
“This is a big piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the whole puzzle,” he says. “The administration won’t talk to organizers about bonded indebtedness or what assets might go over to St. George. That all needs to be resolved. … But the big takeaway from this, at least, is that we’ve come up with a formula that works.”
