Breed backs police retirement measure after spurning firefighters

After coming out against a proposal to lower firefighters’ retirement age, Mayor London Breed says she will support a separate ballot measure that would offer substantial retirement benefits to older police officers who stay on the force.

Breed told The Examiner in an interview last week she is backing the proposed reestablishment of a Deferred Retirement Option Program, commonly referred to as DROP, for San Francisco police officers. The measure, to be voted on in November as Proposition F, would give police officers an incentive to delay their retirements.

Backers see it as a way to address understaffing on the force by keeping officers on staff.

There are more than 100 officers eligible for retirement “waiting to see if something like this will actually pass,” Breed said, explaining her support for Prop. F. Given the department’s shortage of officers, she added, The City has to do whatever it can “to try to retain officers as long as we possibly can.”

The mayor’s statement in support of the proposal follows her decision to oppose Proposition H. That measure would lower the age at which San Francisco firefighters are eligible for retirement with full benefits from 58 to 55. Breed is the only one of the five prominent candidates for mayor who has come out against lowering the retirement age for firefighters .

She framed her stance in favor of the police measure but against the firefighter one as a “difficult decision to make,” but “the most responsible” option.

“When you’re a candidate you can promise the world,” Breed said. “When you're mayor, you have an obligation to be a responsible leader.”

The proposals both center on the retirement benefits of emergency responders. They could cost The City millions of dollars at a time when its budget deficit continues to grow, with no easy fix in sight. Both measures are heading for the ballot as mayoral and supervisorial candidates hope to earn the support of voters — as well as the backing of the powerful firefighters and police officers unions.

Former interim Mayor Mark Farrell — who has fully embraced both the DROP and the firefighters retirement proposals — earned a key endorsement from San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 last week.

The Police Officers Association has not yet weighed in on the mayor’s race but could choose to do so. Although crime rates have fallen , surveys conducted throughout the election show voters are still concerned about public safety , possibly giving the Police Officers Association’s endorsement extra weight.

But it’s unclear to what extent the police union will factor support for the DROP measure into its endorsement decisions. The Police Officers Association didn’t push hard for the DROP measure as it made its way through the Board of Supervisors, saying it would come back with another measure if the DROP plan failed.

One of Breed’s opponents in her bid for reelection — Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — coauthored the DROP proposal with Supervisor Matt Dorsey, the former head of communications for the police department.

Breed told The Examiner she supports the DROP measure to retain police officers after a yearslong stretch in which the department’s staffing has declined significantly. San Francisco is estimated to need just shy of 2,100 officers; when the proposal was introduced in May, The City had just 1,583.

Under the DROP program, participating officers would be paid their full salaries as well as their retirement benefits, which would be held in escrow and collect interest until they finally retire.

Unlike DROP’s goal of retaining officers, the aim of the firefighters’ retirement measure is to allow them to leave at a younger age. The firefighters’ union has cited high rates of cancer experienced by its members, which it links to chemicals firefighters are exposed to on the job, as justification for the change.

Breed does not view it as contradictory to support one department’s retirement measure and not the other’s. One big reason for that: The DROP program must be reevaluated by supervisors after five years, but the firefighters measure would make a permanent change to their retirement system, she noted.

“The biggest difference is there’s a sunset date,” Breed said.

But the mayor has another reason for opposing Prop. H: It would be retroactive, applying to every firefighter hired after 2012. She accused the union, which has openly pushed for the measure, of going “back on their word” after it agreed to the current system as part of a citywide retirement system overhaul more than a decade ago.

“The sad reality about what happened in this particular case — it’s an election year, and this was put on the ballot because it’s an election year,” Breed said of the firefighters measure.

The cost of the measures is difficult to pin down and will depend in large part on how many firefighters and police officers choose to take advantage of them. By its fifth year, the DROP program could actually save The City as much $300,000 annually — or cost it as much as up to $3 million, according to a controller’s analysis.

The DROP measure sparked a controversy as it made its way through the legislative process. Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who is termed out and not seeking reelection, railed against the proposal when it went before the board’s Rules Committee.

In a last-ditch effort to derail the proposal before supervisors placed it on the ballot, an impassioned Ronen argued it would dramatically raise the pay of officers, who are already well-paid by public-employee standards. The City should instead focus on recruiting new, younger officers, Ronen argued.

Although the Rules Committee voted down the proposal, the Board of Supervisors advanced it to the ballot anyway on an 8-3 vote. Breed’s office did not offer support for the DROP measure until after the board’s vote.

San Francisco residents voted in a previous DROP program with 2008’s Proposition B. That measure allowed officers who were at least 50 years old and had at least 25 years of service to stay on the job while their retirement benefits were deposited in an interest-bearing account. The City abandoned the program in 2011 amid cost concerns, after the city controller estimated it would be cheaper to train and hire new cops than keep older ones on board.

Peskin and Dorsey argue they’ve tailored the new DROP program to make it more effective than the last one.