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April 21, 2015      2:00 PM

Lawmakers race to find some answer to Houston pension woes

Murphy's bill to offer broader options to city leaders gets a thumbs down from union members.

The so-called Denton fracking bill might get the bulk of the media coverage as a local control issue, but the tug-of-war between Houston city leaders and the firefighters’ pension fund has just as much passion, interest and concern as any this session.

This week’s hearing in the House Pension Committee, mostly with an angle toward fixing Houston’s broken pension system, was done in just over four hours. But that’s only because more than 100 opponents to Rep. Jim Murphy’s bill agreed to register their opposition but not speak to the committee directly.

For Murphy, a Houston Republican, this is the third attempt to put the power behind the pension decisions back in the hands of city leaders, led by Mayor Annise Parker. On the other side is long-time Rep. Sylvester Turner, the lawmaker who engineered the Employee Retirement System fix this session and managed to squeeze out a bill to bring the city and firefighters to table to put forth a short-term fix.

By Kimberly Reeves