Opinion: Time to discuss state employee benefits
By Joe Nation
Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research has issued two recent reports on the condition of public employee pension funds in California. The first identified a $425 billion funding shortfall for three state pension systems: the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and the University of California Retirement System. The second report found a nearly $200 billion shortfall for local government pension systems.
Both reports focused on the overall financial health of pension systems in California but did not touch on retiree benefit levels. It’s time to begin that conversation.
Discussing public employee retirement benefits is dangerous politically. So let’s start with the legal status of benefits owed to public employees.
Benefits to public employee retirees are legally protected. Period. Case and contract law guarantee retirement pay, even in the obscene cases where public employees double dip (i.e., collect a large pension from one or more employers and work at full salary for another). If the public is angry about benefits levels or double dippers, we shouldn’t blame public employees, but the political leaders who approved benefits that are both excessive and unsustainable.
I may have a unique perspective on this issue because every member of my immediate family has worked in public service. (My mother is a retired school librarian; my younger brother works as a firefighter/paramedic; an older brother was a high school science teacher; and my father retired from a public university.) They and all public employees are owed what we have promised them.
I agree they are owned what we promised them. What should be re-evaluated is what are we promising. Is a full pay pension affordable? At what age and after how many years of service? Do we have to promise this type of benefit which the private sector does not have?
I’d say that a group of business owners should be consulted to see what industry is doing before we spend our tax dollars.
Back in the eighties the government workers’ unions used to argue that the employees would be making much more if they were doing that job in the private sector. My argument was, “go ahead, get that private job, then.” But it worked, even though they never actually showed the comps. Now it’s extremely obvious that public “servants” make way more in wages, benefits, and job security than most people in the private realm. And new hires need to be made aware that a government job is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I heard the same thing dogwoman. I was always told that working in the public sector was a sacrifice, that you were paid way less, but it was somewhat made up with your pension. Times sure have changed, now you make more money throughout your government career, have more job security, better benefits, and a better retirement, and the people who pay for this have less of everything, so it’s getting harder if not impossible to keep up with.
It should be phased down to industry standards.