{"id":115162,"date":"2025-08-28T02:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/115162\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T02:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:05:07","slug":"city-of-houston-employees-say-they-havent-been-paid-promised-pension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/115162\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Houston employees say they haven&#8217;t been paid promised pension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They took a retirement buyout several months ago, but hundreds of former City of Houston employees said they haven&#8217;t seen any of the money.<\/p>\n<p>HOUSTON \u2014 Hundreds of City of Houston retirees reported that they still haven&#8217;t received their pension payments after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.khou.com\/article\/news\/politics\/houston-employees-retirement-incentive-program-budget\/285-657c9aca-dfa1-49c0-a5bc-513c289f97e5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">taking retirement buyouts<\/a> several months ago.<\/p>\n<p>At least that was the message on Wednesday at City Hall from Councilmember Edward Pollard.<\/p>\n<p>It led to a back-and-forth between him and Mayor John Whitmire.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You mentioned last week that this issue would be resolved by the end of this month,&#8221; Pollard said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I told you what the pension fund, which is an independent body, gave us,&#8221; Whitmire said.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.khou.com\/article\/news\/politics\/houston-employees-retirement-incentive-program-budget\/285-657c9aca-dfa1-49c0-a5bc-513c289f97e5\" class=\"cms__embed-related-story__link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">More than 1,000 City of Houston employees accept retirement incentive program as budget deficit looms<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And from what I&#8217;m hearing from the pension board is that there will be nearly 300 employees who will still not be receiving payment beyond this month,&#8221; Pollard said.<\/p>\n<p>Whitmire said the issue is being politicized, and the pension board is responsible for the payments. He said they&#8217;re handling the issue.<\/p>\n<p>May 1 was the last day of work for more than 1,000 city employees who accepted the city&#8217;s voluntary retirement incentive program. The city offered the program to 2,800 employees who were already eligible for retirement. Thirty-seven percent, or 1,059 accepted.<\/p>\n<p>According to the city&#8217;s finance department, the city was expected to save approximately $30 million in the next fiscal year due to the program.<\/p>\n<p>That will partly help the city&#8217;s efforts to address a $330 million budget deficit. In May, Whitmire told reporters his administration was taking into consideration recommendations from an Ernst &amp; Young audit of city departments in order to find efficiencies.<\/p>\n<p>Got a news tip or story idea? Text it to us at 713-526-1111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They took a retirement buyout several months ago, but hundreds of former City of Houston employees said they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-115162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}