Darien Saves Cash On Running Cop Pension Fund

DARIEN, IL – Darien already appears to be saving money in managing its police pension fund.

In 2019, the Legislature decided to merge the hundreds of police pension funds into one system. The same was done for fire pensions.

The transfers of money have taken place over the last year.

The idea behind consolidation was to save on costs for actuaries, investment advisers and lawyers, among others. As it was, the average investment returns for the hundreds of funds were lower than that of state consolidated pension systems such as the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund.

At Monday's Darien City Council meeting, the city's actuary, Jason Franken of Foster & Foster, said the consolidated police and fire pension funds have not started providing the annual actuary reports that he gives to the city.

That could be a couple of years down the road, he said. Such a move by the state would cut Franken and others from such actuary business, which is expected to provide more savings to towns.

In a later email to Patch, City Treasurer Michael Coren said the local police pension fund spent $93,134 on administrative costs for the next budget year, which ended April 30, 2022.

The costs were $64,255 for the budget year ending April 30, 2023. The local money was with the merged system for seven months of that year.

The city has saved 45 percent on the management of the fund.