Two Baltimore County Council members said this week they want to repeal retirement system changes the body approved in 2024 that would double council members’ pensions during a time of state and county belt-tightening.

Council Chair Mike Ertel and Councilman Izzy Patoka, both Democrats, announced their intentions Monday night, stating that they felt it was “appropriate” to reconsider the pension modifications the council previously approved in a 5-1 vote. Patoka voted for it; Ertel voted against it.

But the two other Democratic council members, Julian Jones and Pat Young, blame the problem on a different piece of legislation: an approved charter amendment that required council membership to be considered a full-time position for the purpose of determining compensation.

That charter change is more commonly known for expanding the council from seven to nine members. Both voted for the pension changes and against the charter amendment.

Bill 40-24, the pension legislation, was sponsored by Councilman Wade Kach, a Lutherville-Timonium Republican. It states that if the salaries paid to council members are changed, any member who retires after Jan. 1, 2025, could have their pension recalculated based on salary increases to the positions they once held.

The pay plan has come under public scrutiny after former county administrative officer Fred Homan noted in a letter sent to the council and reporters that the changes, coupled with future salary recommendations from the county’s Personnel and Salary Advisory Board in December, would substantially increase or double retiring council members’ pensions.

The salary board recommended pay hikes from $69,000 to $140,000 for council members and a boost from $77,000 to $150,000 for the council chair. The council may reject or reduce the recommendation, but cannot increase it.

Ertel said Monday that the council usually takes up a vote on salary recommendations in the summer. They have not yet been approved.

But the pension plan, in light of the recent salary recommendations, could double the retirement allowance for the two immediately retiring council members, Kach and Republican Councilman Todd Crandell, for instance — both of whom have spent 12 years on the council — and substantially increase pensions for others with longer tenures.

Before the changes, both would have received $41,400 per year, according to calculations from Homan’s letter. After the tweaks, both would have been slated to get $84,000 per year in pension payments — more than their current council salaries. Kevin Reed, director of the county’s Office of Budget and Finance, confirmed Tuesday that the calculations were correct.

“It is deplorable, and the citizens deserve much better,” said Tom Quirk, a Democrat who represented Catonsville on the council for 12 years. “This is completely self-enrichment at the expense of the taxpayer — a taxpayer who’s struggling right now and barely making ends meet because of inflationary pressure.”

The council approved the plan in a 5-1 vote. Patoka voted for it; Ertel voted against it. Crandell, a Dundalk Republican, was not at the meeting and did not vote. Former County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. returned the bill to the council without his signature.

Ertel, the lone vote against the pension changes, told The Baltimore Sun he didn’t like the optics of the legislation and didn’t believe pensions should be tied to current salaries. But he also said no one anticipated that the council’s salaries could go up that much in a year.

“I think ultimately we need to deal with this because I feel like there is a loss of trust in the council,” he said in an interview Monday night. “It certainly looks like we were voting for a windfall for ourselves, and that really wasn’t the case. But, that’s the reality of what’s happened here, is that it looks that way, and I think we just need to correct that.”

Patoka, who is also running for county executive, said in an interview Monday afternoon that he regretted his vote on the pension bill.

“I never would have imagined that through this confluence of events, that it would skyrocket, that it would be propelled to such a high level,” he said, referring to the combined impact of the pension legislation, increasing council salaries and the salary board’s recent recommendations. “That was not the intent, and had I known it was the intent, I wouldn’t have voted that way.”

The councilmen weren’t the first ones to publicly call for change. Nick Stewart, a Democratic candidate for county executive, called for the council to repeal the pension bill on Friday, describing it as “self-dealing” and a “moral outrage.”

However, Jones and Young feel that including the full-time council membership provision in a lengthy charter amendment that primarily focused on expansion and redistricting was deceptive.

That charter amendment, introduced by Patoka the same day the council approved the pension bill and approved by county voters on the ballot in November 2024, increased the number of council districts and offered a now-scrapped redistricting map. However, the provision to classify council membership as a full-time position was included in the ballot question.

Jones said Monday that the pension bill, by itself, would not have resulted in any “outrageous things,” but he added that the salary aspect should not have been part of the charter amendment. Now, he’s calling for a different charter amendment to repeal that.

“The problem at hand is the idea that a salary for a council member should be considered full-time for compensation purposes only,” he said. “I believe that we can fix this issue with the salary, but moving forward, we need to make it clear that it is a part-time position, and the salary should reflect a part-time position.”

Young, 42, who would benefit the least from the pension bill, said it was “extremely disappointing” that the public was deceived by Patoka.

“At the time, you’re voting in lieu of [cost of living adjustment] increases, just tying the salaries to salary increases like the legislature does in Annapolis,” he said. “No one realizes an issue until two years later because the public was deceived that they voted for the council going to full-time, inevitably raising their salaries and inevitably tying to a bill that by itself was innocuous.”

Have a news tip? Contact Natalie Jones at najones@baltsun.com or 443-679-7818.