After three and a half years in Dallas, police chief Eddie Garcia is retiring from the department to become an assistant city manager in Austin where he will oversee that city’s public safety operations.
Garcia will follow former Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax to Texas’s capital city, becoming the fourth Dallas official hired for an Austin city government job.
With Garcia’s classifying his departure from Dallas as a “retirement from law enforcement,” is he eligible for retirement benefits through the Dallas Police and Fire pension fund or any other kind of severance payment from the city?
According to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System guidelines, members receive full pension benefits when they turn 58 years old. To receive reduced pension benefits upon retirement, the member must either have served with the Dallas Police Department for 20 years, or have served Dallas PD for five years and be at least 53 years old.
While Garcia, who is 53, meets the age requirement for reduced benefits, he is still one-and-a-half years short of the time requirement, and is thus ineligible for any kind of Dallas police pension benefits.
So, what about any kind of severance pay?
In May, Garcia signed an addendum to his initial 2020 offer letter from the city. Earning $306,440.40 annually, Garcia became the highest paid police chief in a major city in the state of Texas, and was eligible for several bonuses if he stayed with the city. The addendum came after reports that Houston and Austin were seeking to hire away Dallas’s top cop, and city officials hoped the new agreement would keep Garcia with Dallas until 2027.
The addendum outlined that if another police chief in a Texas city with a population over one million was being paid higher than Garcia, his pay would be adjusted to be higher than that chief’s. Currently, that list only includes San Antonio and Houston, though Fort Worth and Austin are both nearing the one million population mark.
Garcia was also set to be paid a $20,000 bonus every year he stayed with the city, to be paid in $10,000 installments twice a year, though Garcia will leave Dallas without ever having collected that bonus.
According to the addendum, Garcia would have been eligible for a lump sum payment of one year’s salary had he been terminated without fault or resigned at the request of the city manager. If he voluntarily resigned, was fired due to poor performance or due to being convicted of an offense involving “moral turpitude” or a felony, he would not have received the payment.
While Garcia has referred to his departure as a retirement, the pension system requires retirees to schedule a retirement appointment 45 to 60 days in advance, and it is unclear Thursday evening if Garcia went through this process.
However, many Dallas officials expressed surprise at his departure. The addendum does not mention if he would receive severance or not upon retirement, and it is unclear at this time if the city is treating this as a retirement or a resignation.
The addendum also says if Garcia voluntarily resigns, he is supposed to provide his continued availability to the city to assist in the transition to the next chief. Per a memo sent to Austin City Council members, Garcia’s first day in Austin will be Nov. 4.
