The Phoenix city budget has been strangled by spiking pension costs for years as the city struggles to pay the benefits for public-safety workers like police officers and firefighters.
And on Wednesday, the City Council came up with a plan to punt on paying that pension debt. They voted 7-2 to ask the state-run pension system to allow the city to take an extra decade — 30 years instead of 20 — to pay off its debt.
Here are a few voices from the meeting last night.
Ken Crane is the president of PLEA, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, one of the unions for public-safety workers, and Tom Jenney is with the group Americans for Prosperity and opposed the action.
And here to tell us more about that is Dustin Gardiner, who covers City Hall for the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com.
