The Stansels, of Conroe, are a firefighting family. Bill Stansel served 33 years in the Houston Fire Department ,and his sons, Jerry and Mike, served 31 and 17 years, respectively.

"The department has fed me and clothed me and covered me every day since I've been on this planet," Jerry Stansel says.

When Bill Stansel died a decade ago, his pension checks - now about $29,300 a year, after taxes and health premiums - passed to his wife, Billie. Now 86, she is preparing to move into a retirement home.

Billie's pension checks won't cover that, so she's renting out her home in Conroe. Her payments to the retirement community are projected to increase about 4 percent annually, and there could be a lot of years left - Billie's sister is 95 and going strong.

That has Jerry Stansel concerned about Houston's pension reform proposal, which Mayor Sylvester Turner hopes the Legislature will pass early next year.

Much of the proposal's $2.5 billion in benefit cuts would come from reducing or ending retirees' guaranteed annual cost of living adjustments (COLAs). Public safety retirees' increases instead would be linked to inflation, as Social Security payments are. Municipal retirees would get 1 percent increases.

"That's the only way she's been able to keep up with the cost of living increases over the years since dad's been gone," Jerry Stansel said of the compounding 3 percent COLAs his mother receives. "She'll be losing money every year if they take that away. I don't know how long we'll be able to sustain her over there at the retirement place."

A series of benefit increases, mostly between 1997 and 2001, spurred Houston's pension mess. Costs spiked rather than increasing slightly, as flawed studies had predicted, and the city has since struggled to keep up with its pension payments.

Today, many public safety employees with more than 30 years on the job retire with $1 million in cash in a deferred retirement account, and many longtime firefighters, for example, then collect pensions worth more than 90 percent of their pre-retirement salaries.

'Going to hurt them'

But Billie Stansel and hundreds of other beneficiaries rely on pensions awarded under less generous rules. In the mid-1990s, firefighters retiring after three decades got an average annual pension of roughly $34,000, about 80 percent of their final salaries.

"The pre-'97 people had nothing to do with this," said Nick Salem, president of the Houston Retired Firefighters Association. "If you take this COLA away from them, you're really going to hurt them."

Turner said the impact on retirees was frequently discussed in the reform negotiations, and said he also has committed to bring firefighters' and municipal retirees' health premiums - a key expense for pensioners - in line with the lower rates paid by retired police officers.

"We took into account the impact that it would have on retirees as well as the impact it would have on actives, and we tried to strike a healthy balance," Turner said. "If you are a retiree and you're receiving a check today, your check is not going to go down."

Craig Mason, an actuary who served 10 years as the city's chief pension expert, said the typical 1990s retiree collects a solid pension and should not face hardship under the reform plan.

Many workers retiring in the 1990s got pensions worth about half their final salaries if they left after 20 years, or 80 percent if they left after 30 years.

After two decades of compounding 3 percent COLAs, Mason said, those initial benefit checks would be about 75 percent higher today. Inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has increased costs about 50 percent in that time.

"It's certainly not as generous as the people who retired after that," Mason said, "but the people who retired after that, the benefits are just unreasonably generous."

Less risky system?

Turner said those concerned about the proposal must weigh its changes with the risk that the pension funds someday could collapse.

"We're providing a pension retirement system where the checks will keep coming, (where) they know that they can count on a system that is stable and reliable," Turner said. "The current system is not."

The reform plan - which has won preliminary praise from pension experts - would eliminate Houston's nearly $8 billion pension under-funding in 30 years, assume more realistic investment returns and avoid billions in future costs through benefit cuts for retirees, current workers and future hires.

It's unclear what portion of the estimated $2.5 billion in cuts come from COLA reductions, but past city studies have shown those changes would produce the most savings of any single reform measure.

'Retain their dignity'

Houston is not unique in this finding: A National Association of State Retirement Administrators study found that 30 states have changed COLAs for retirees, workers or future hires in the last seven years.

For Houston's fire pension retirees and beneficiaries, the reform plan would match their COLAs to those granted by the Social Security Administration, whose payments will rise 0.3 percent in 2017. Pre-1997 beneficiaries, however, would be assured an increase of at least 1 percent for the first three years.

Fire pension board chairman David Keller said that exception shows his board is sensitive to the roughly 640 recipients drawing pensions under pre-1997 rules.

"We placed a high value on protecting the oldest guys as best we could," Keller said. "We want to make sure they still retain their dignity in their retirement. This definitely changes what they thought they had coming, and that makes it a little more challenging for people that may not be equipped for that."

Adjusting COLAs is problematic for retirees, Keller said, because measures of inflation do not account for the rising cost of medical care. Since 1982, the cost of living has doubled but medical costs have quadrupled, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Keeping promises

Bill Elkins, who heads the 1,700-member Houston Police Retired Officers Association, echoed that.

"No one likes to think that if they work 30 or 40 years, that after they retire they're going to start losing dollars as the cost of living increases," Elkins said. "Under this plan, the COLA could be just pennies."

Elkins worked five years in banking after retiring from HPD in 1992 and said many contemporaries also left the department earlier and took on second careers more often than current retirees. So, although his contemporaries' pensions are smaller, Elkins said, many had a second chance to accumulate savings.

Jerry Stansel is less concerned about his finances than his mother's. Stansel, who retired from HFD as a senior captain in 2003, said he nets more than $38,000 annually after taxes and health care premiums.

Stansel left HFD because his wife had just been diagnosed with cancer and needed care. She beat a bad prognosis, he said, but the fight drained their savings and left her unable to work.

So today, Stansel delivers flowers part-time and plans to return to work in the occupational safety field.

"There were a lot of years where the city said, 'We can't afford to give you a pay raise but we'll increase your pension benefit,' and we took them at their word," Stansel said. "I kept my promise. My father kept his promise. We just expect the same from others."