Also Houston resident. That whole thing was ridiculous. The problem goes back many years. Municipal and Police blew up the pension budget to something unsustainable through a variety of tactics, and firefighters got nowhere near the amount of cash that those two departments got. Then like 20 years ago when all of the cities in America started defunding pensions and then the chickens came to roost, Houston started issuing crazy bonds to keep up with the police and municipal workers, and firefighters actually had a decent fund that was mostly self sustaining and didn't require external funding as far as I know. Something super high like 90% of their pensions were fully funded.

Then when Houston made budget cuts recently, they disproportionately cut firefighter pensions even though they were mostly responsible and funded, but I guess it looked like a stash of cash to the city. Keep in mind firefighters had previously made pay raise sacrifices to ensure their pension benefits continued. So they wanted the pay raises back since the pensions got cut, and they got laid off (and also some raise was given).