Wachs Urges Changes in Fire, Police Pensions : Charter: Councilman proposes to allow continued benefits when spouses of deceased officers and firefighters remarry. The change would bring benefits into line with those of other city employees.

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs proposed an amendment to the City Charter on Monday that would allow spouses of deceased police officers and firefighters to continue receiving pension and other benefits if they remarry.

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams, Fire Chief William Bamattre, representatives of police and fire employee groups and surviving spouses joined Wachs in decrying the current system as archaic and unfair.

Other deceased city employees’ spouses and children maintain benefits regardless of whether they remarry, but a remnant of the police and firefighters’ pension system first written into the charter in 1889 prevents their widows and widowers from receiving the same treatment.

“It’s discriminatory, it’s hurtful, it’s anti-firefighter and anti-police officer to the core. It’s anti-family at its worst,” Wachs said at a morning news conference in front of a fountain memorializing slain officers outside the LAPD’s Downtown headquarters. “It’s a wrong that must be righted.”

Royce A. Menkus of the city Department of Pensions said there are about 2,000 surviving spouses of police officers and firefighters receiving benefits. About 50 surviving spouses have gotten married and thus lost their benefits over the past decade, she said.

Officials were unable to provide an estimate of what the charter change would cost, but said surviving spouses receive an average of about $25,000 a year. If the 50 spouses who remarried had their benefits reinstated it would cost about $1.25 million a year.

“Whether its $1 or $1 million doesn’t change my opinion,” Wachs said. “What’s right is right.”

The issue was brought to Wachs’ attention by Andria Pratt, the widow of Officer Daniel Pratt, who was gunned down in a gang-related incident in 1988.

“Why should the city of Los Angeles further victimize the deceased officers’ loved ones for wanting to financially care for their families and go on with their lives?” Pratt, a mother of three, asked in a statement. “The remarriage clause can force a moral dilemma. Should we be lucky enough to find love a second time around, do we remarry and lose all benefits, or do we live with someone without remarrying them? For me, personally, not to marry under such circumstances would be against everything I believe in.”

Wachs said he would present a motion formalizing his proposal today and hopes to have an amendment placed on the ballot for the next election, in March. Charter amendments require the approval of the council and the mayor to be placed on the ballot.