Mayor Lenny Curry, pushing for Jacksonville to become the first major city in America without pensions for its future employees, made a remarkable counteroffer to the city’s public-safety unions Wednesday that would restore more costly pension benefits to current employees, while creating 401(k)-style investment accounts for new employees with hefty 25 percent matching contributions from the city.
The total package would add many millions of dollars more in city costs each year and would undo key portions of a highly regarded 2015 pension-reform law, showing that Curry is committed to ending pensions even at a potentially great financial expense.