The Hall County Board of Commissioners were served with an estimated $75 million class-action lawsuit before their meeting on Thursday over frozen pension benefits for Hall County employees.
There are 100 employees in the suit, 70 current and 30 retired, most of which are or were first responders.
“When (the employees) started work here, they were promised a pension that gave them a benefit that the county, back in 1998, took away from them and froze," said Michael Kramer, of counsel for Buckley Beal, the law firm handling this case.
“And it continues to be frozen,” added Ed Buckley, managing partner for Buckley Beal. “It was frozen before, it’s frozen now and it’s frozen illegally and that’s the point. The commissioners can undo that if they want to.”
Eligibility for the pension plan is based on a combination of the employee’s age and years of service. Once age plus years of service equals 75, that person can retire, or if they have at least five years of service, they can retire at 65. There are also full and reduced pension plans.
By freezing pensions in 1998, the county cut off any more additional years of service to be counted towards the plan.
Kramer said that some first responders worked another 20 years and should be credited with those years of service. Anyone who retired between 1998 and 2008 had the opportunity to get full benefits through a grandfather clause and those who worked longer aren’t getting their full retirement.
“Anybody who was in the plan,” said Kramer referring to those who retired between 1998 and 2008. “Working side by side with these men and women (in the class-action lawsuit) at the same time, in the same plan, all of those people got to retire with the full plate of benefits.”
The pension plan in question is an employer contribution-based plan. Only the county made contributions to this plan. There was a requirement for the county to give an annual minimum funding contribution that is based on projections of the amount of benefits to be paid out during the lifespan of the employees. Employees did not have to pay into the fund, so it is up to Hall County to make the contributions that’ll bring the plan back to square one in order for the benefits to be paid out and then, as the employees retire, there will be a minimum contribution built into the budget every year, according to the suit.
“All we’re asking for is what we were promised when we first started,” said Brad Rounds, Captain for the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “It was a different commission back in 1998; however, this commission, I think, is responsible to look at the situation and say ‘these employees were wronged and we need to do something to make it right for them.’”
“These commissioners didn’t do this originally,” Buckley said. “But now this is on their watch and this illegal freezing of this pension can be undone at this time. If they want to undo it, they can undo it, or we will have a court undo it.”
Ironically enough, the first item on the agenda following the invocation and pledge of allegiance at Thursday’s meeting was a mid-year budget update where it was stated that Hall County has a very healthy budget, which gave Kramer and Buckley confidence that the county has the money to pay these first responders what they were promised if they choose to do it.
“This is the point where they are entitled to receive their appropriate benefits,” Kramer said. “They’re ready to retire.”
“I was eligible for retirement a year and a half ago,” said Rounds, whose ‘frozen’ monthly pension is $398 compared to the $2,600 it would be under the plan’s original pension formula. “But we can’t, we can’t retire, we can’t afford to retire because we have nothing to retire on.”
