Fifteen widows of former Pawtucket police officers and firefighters are not getting the pension benefits they should be receiving, says City Councilor Tim Rudd.
Rudd is pushing for officials to fix a discrepancy between a 2006 council resolution and 2006 city ordinance and put cost-of-living pay increases into the widows’ accounts. The money would be paid for the years since 2006 and going forward, according to Rudd.
According to a resolution approved in June 2006, widows of police officers and firefighters who were hired prior to 1972 were to be excluded from receiving 2 percent compounding cost-of-living increases, but an ordinance passed in December of that year gave both the public safety workers and their spouses the cost of living increase, or COLA.
Finance Director Joanna L’Heureux, in a letter to the City Council’s ordinance committee to be considered Wednesday night, said that the ordinance giving the lifetime COLA to widows does not include language that allows officials to go back retroactively and make changes. Only those spouses who became widows on Dec. 15, 2006, or after would be entitled to the COLA, said L’Heureux. Rudd said there are five widows of police officers and 10 widows of firefighters who would get retroactive pay and future compounding COLAs if his proposal moves forward.
The five police widows whose spouses died before December of 2006 currently receive a total of $85,724 per year in new pension benefits. They would get another $94,000 total in retroactive pay and cost an additional $17,000 a year, according to L’Heureux.