The Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund Board of Trustees is to have a total of ten members.  Two are appointed by the full City Council, six members are chosen from the police and fire departments, and two are chosen from the police and fire pensioners.  

Four of the Trustees were recently re-elected by the Police and Fire membership.  The two Council Members serving as Trustees, Don Hill and Dr. Maxine Thornton-Reese, are holdover appointments from Mayor Ron Kirk. 

A review of the minutes of the Board meetings is quite revealing.   In 2005, 41 meeting dates were scheduled.  Dr. Reese did not attend any of these meetings and Councilmember Hill attended six of the meetings.

In the first four months of 2006, eleven meetings were held in which minutes are available.  Of those meetings, Dr. Reese did not attend any meetings and Councilmember Hill only attended one meeting.

For the remainder of 2006 and to-date in 2007, the minutes either are not available or do not list which Trustees are present and absent.   Agendas for subsequent meetings indicate approval of minutes is to be considered, but the minutes have not been posted.  In some cases, minutes of meetings held a year ago have not been posted.   For the minutes that have been posted, the content of the minutes is woefully inadequate.  

Does the lack of oversight by the City Council mean this Pension Plan is mismanaged?  Not at all.  It does mean that there is a lack of balance in the policy decisions by the Trustees.   You only need to look at the $410 million funding shortfall in the Fort Worth pension plan to see the downside potential of not minding the store.

At December 31, 2005, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Plan had $2.74 billion in assets.  The City contributed over $87 million to the Plan during 2005.  This is not an insignificant fund.

When the new Mayor and Council take office in June, we hope the Council Members appointed as Trustees for the Plan will take their fiduciary duties seriously.  We also trust that the staff will endeavor to ensure that a more comprehensive report of the Board attendance and activities will be made available to members and the public on a timely basis.

UPDATE-The City Council is to name, from among its members, four (4) Council members to serve as Trustees of the Board.  The board should have twelve Trustees in total.  There are two Council-appointee vacancies on the Board.