Mayor Rahm Emanuel isn’t used to being
told “no,” but that’s the answer he has gotten from the firefighters
pension fund this week on two major issues: duty disability reform and
his call for the fund to dump its stock with assault weapons
manufacturers.
Two motions were made at Wednesday’s
meeting of the Chicago Firefighters Annuity and Benefits Fund — one to
divest $173,000 in Smith & Wesson stock, the other to ride herd over
the 390 firefighters and paramedics who together collect $27 million a
year in taxpayer-funded duty disability pay.
Both motions failed — by 5-2 on guns and
4-3 on duty disability reform — prompting City Comptroller Amer Ahmad
to storm out of the meeting in disgust.
Contacted Thursday, Ahmad refused to
discuss the vote. His spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, responded in an
email to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“The Mayor remains committed to standing
up against gun companies that stand in the way of commonsense reform
and will continue [to] seek out necessary reforms that protect taxpayer
dollars from fraud and abuse in the disability program,” Strand wrote.
“While we are disturbed by the fire
pension fund’s decision, we are more so encouraged by the those funds —
including laborers, police, municipal, and teachers — that have chosen
to stand with us against these gun companies.”
A mayoral confidant, who asked to remain
anonymous, denounced the back-to-back votes as “shameful” and
politically motivated by Emanuel’s demand for contract and pension fund
concessions from Chicago firefighters.
“It’s a consistent pattern of behavior.
They’re just not dealing in reality. There’s a whole attitude of fight
and resist everything,” the Emanuel confidant said. “Just to say, ‘We’re
against it’ because the mayor is for it — it’s not embarrassing to the
mayor. They embarrassed themselves. That’s not an ideology. There’s no
principle there.”
Tony Martin, secretary of the
firefighters pension fund, said the fund has “a very nominal amount
considering the $1 billion size of our portfolio” invested in Smith
& Wesson.
“There was no motion to adopt a broad
divestment policy from assault weapons manufacturers. It was one
specific manufacturer,” Martin said. “There was no intent to embarrass
anybody. My trustees are always trying to do the right thing for the
right reason. We’re concerned about our fiduciary duty to our
participants. The goal is to put them first.”
Among other things, the disability
reforms would have required firefighters and paramedics who receive
disability pay to get more frequent medical checkups and provide the
pension fund with more information about their second jobs.
Emanuel proposed the reforms in response to a series of Chicago Sun-Times stories about alleged disability abuses.
The newspaper reported that the police
disability system includes 347 officers, covering a range of conditions,
from the most severely disabled to others who are able to work, who
have gone on to new careers while on disability and, in some cases,
moved away while continuing to collect a city check and other benefits.
The series highlighted two officers who never served a single day on the
street. They went on disability after sustaining injuries during
training at the police academy.
The Chicago Fire Department is less than
half the size, but it has 390 people on disability leave at an annual
cost of $27 million. Only eight disabled firefighters have returned to
work since 2003.
After the Connecticut school massacre, Emanuel made national headlines by broadening his push for an assault weapons ban.
He argued that it was time to hit gun
manufacturers in the pocketbook — by pressuring government pension funds
in Chicago and around the nation to dump their weapons stock.
Ahmad likened the political pressure tactic to the movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa.
Despite lingering bitterness after the
seven-day strike by Chicago Public Schools teachers, the teachers
pension fund announced a plan to get rid of the $260,000 in stock with
three manufacturers of assault weapons.
The teachers pension fund insisted that the divestiture started before Emanuel launched his campaign.
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