Voice: March 2017
If Yogi Berra were alive and watching the state Legislature, he'd surely be muttering: "Déjà vu all over again."
Another session of the Legislature, and so-called pension "reformers" again are howling at the moon with proposals that aren't reform at all, but wolves in sheeps' clothing.
Just what the latest incarnation will be isn't yet known, but when Gov. Tom Wolf announced his proposed fiscal 2017-18 state budget, the usual suspects in the Legislature were saying the budget would have to be accompanied by - drum roll please - pension reform.
"These people have been trying for four years now, and their proposals just keep getting worse," said PSEA Treasurer Rich Askey. "The only consistencies are a vastly inferior pension program for new hires, and costing school districts and taxpayers more money in the immediate future."
Perhaps these "reformers" should take the time to read the latest actuarial report for the Public School Employees' Retirement System to see how Act 120 of 2010 is working to address PSERS' $42.7 billion unfunded liability (see story on Page 15).
In wanting to impose an inferior pension plan on new hires, "reformers" also continue to conveniently ignore the fact that employers created the pension crisis by giving themselves a nearly 10-year "pension holiday" in which they failed to make the actuarially required contributions to the fund.
Whatever new plan emerges may have some different wrinkles, but it will almost certainly contain the same wrinkles as previous pension proposals. The latest plan last year would have forced new employees to choose between a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan or a dramatically reduced defined benefit plan tied to a 401(k) plan.
It would have cost school districts $95 million more than the current system through 2026. And the changes for the State Employees' Retirement System would have cost taxpayers an additional $216 million over the next decade.
"The real issue here isn't about addressing the unfunded liability; it's about political ideology that is anti-public employee, anti-public school, and anti-union," Askey said. "It's not about pension reform, it's about pension deform."
