Life in "Progress" City - Cincinnati edition

From the Queen City..........

None of the numbers Cincinnati City Council members heard or saw at a meeting Thursday about the staggering financial woes of the city's retirement system offered much encouragement about finding a less-than-painful solution.

Not the warning that, without substantive changes, the $2 billion system could see a projected $1 billion long-term shortfall balloon to $1.5 billion within five years.

Not the fact that, even if the plan achieves what many see as wildly optimistic investment returns, it still could lose up to $30 million a year. Not recommendations that, to avert those doomsday scenarios, City Hall might be asked to come up with an immediate cash infusion of as much as $439 million or nearly double its annual payments.

And, perhaps most importantly, not the roughly 125 city retirees and workers in the audience at the Duke Energy Convention Center whose lives could be significantly affected by any changes - and whose attitudes and fears were passionately expressed by a retired city garage worker toward the end of the three-hour hearing.

"You keep on wanting to take more and more and more from us," said Thomas Koch of Bethel, who worked for the city for 32½ years. "It doesn't seem fair that you keep on wanting to kick the retirees when we worked long and hard. ... I'd like you to have a little bit more respect for retirees."

As council members strove to make clear at the meeting, they do respect retirees, but also may need more money from them - and from current city workers and taxpayers as well - to put the troubled Cincinnati Retirement System on solid financial ground.

"We're in a disaster scenario here," said Councilman Chris Bortz.

If you are a "progressive" and in a "disaster scenario" what do you do?

Without minimizing the scope of the problem, Bortz said after the meeting that he believes council should "not do anything on this for at least two years,"...........

Deferring disaster scenarios for at least two years when you're probably no longer there to deal with it?

Now that's "Progressive"!

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