Time for Government Employee Pension Reform
In the latest round of budget cuts, it was decided to take $17.5 million out of a fund which had been set aside to cover an expected $3 billion-plus “unfunded liability” Nevada taxpayers face in the state’s retirement benefits account for government employees in the future. It’s sort of like what the federal government does when it takes money from the Social Security trust fund for ongoing operations.
When asked why the government was taking money set aside for the future to cover a budget shortfall today rather than cutting present-day spending, state Sen. Bob Beers put it bluntly: “Our grandchildren don’t vote.” That’s true. But it’s wrong to be kicking the can down the road and pawning off politically difficult decisions to the next generation.
The problem is we’ve promised government employees future pension benefits we simply cannot afford. And the longer we wait to address the problem, the harder – and more painful - it will be to solve. Just like Social Security. So the first step is to acknowledge that it’s time to completely rethink exactly what kinds of retirement benefits, including health care, we can provide government workers and how to best do so.
Currently, Nevada state employees are provided what it known as a “defined benefit” plan for retirement. This means the government puts money into a common pool and invests it. If the expected income generated from the investments won’t cover the amount of money needed to provide the benefits promised, that’s known as an unfunded liability. And that means taxpayers must put more money into the “pool” to cover the expected future shortfall. But unless the way we provide retirement benefits to government employees changes, taxpayers will constantly be hit up to pump more and more money into the system until it finally bankrupts the state.
The key is to recognize this financial fact and take concrete steps to fix it now, not later.
The whole concept of “defined benefits” needs to be reassessed. The private sector moved away from “defined benefit” plans long ago because such plans were bankrupting firms. Instead, private companies moved to 401-K plans where the company and the employee contribute set amounts into a retirement fund which the employee chooses and controls and can take with him or her if he or she changes jobs. Similar plans can and should be established for government workers.
Known as “defined contribution” plans, both the employer and the employee contribute to a personal plan set up by and for the employee. A chief benefit for the worker is that he doesn’t have to be “vested” – meaning working for the employer for a long number of years – in order to get the benefits. Also, government workers will no longer have to fear losing their retirement entirely if the system goes belly-up or if politicians decide to change the benefits.
The chief benefit for taxpayers is that they would no longer be on the hook to cover “unfunded liabilities” if the investments government makes don’t pan out. The taxpayers’ liability under “defined contribution” plans is fixed and certain. In addition, it will be far easier to recruit quality workers on a short-term basis when appropriate if those workers don’t have to wait to become “vested” in order to benefit from the retirement program. Plus, without the expense of the government overseeing an extensive investment fund, taxpayers will save a significant amount of money.
A number of states have already offered some of their government workers, at the state and/or local levels, the option of moving from “defined benefit” programs to “defined contributions” programs, including such large states as California, Florida, Texas, Colorado and Michigan. It’s long past time for Nevada to do the same. And that’s the Lowden Line.
Filed under: Lowden Line on April 16th, 2008
[...] Most folks will think this to be a “dry” topic, but the state’s out-of-control pension system, if not fixed soon, could very well bankrupt the state no matter how well the economy bounces back in the months to come. So you should take a serious look at what the former Chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee has to say on the subject HERE [...]
With over 25 million government employees nationwide the taxpayer is going to get it right between the eyes, again. For a real close up look at how out of control public pensions really are, visit CAFR1.com.
I would like to take a moment or two to speak to this issue as both a teacher and a Republican. And for all of you listening, as frustrating as it can be to address the look of baffled faces in the crowd, the two are not at all mutually exclusive. I am a proud conservative, and as evidence of this, I will tell all of you that three of my all-time favorite authors are CS Lewis — his Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain were always great fun to read as a child — William F. Buckley Jr, and Milton Friedman. I have served actively as both a Republican and a Clark County Education Association member, was elected at the January 19th Caucus events to serve as a Delegate to the County Convention, and served honorably at the Clark County Convention.
I wonder, however, how many people have actually considered the complex nature of the public employee retirement question. Let me start by positing the following. First, whatever your notions of public educators, I put a great deal of time and effort into preparing and actually teaching. I spend countless hours creating curriculum, researching the impacts of specific instructional types, and of course teaching in the old-fashioned manners that worked so well in this country into the 1940s and 50s. All, I might add, to the displeasure of some of the more liberal members of my profession. As an English instructor, I focus on Greek and Latin roots, grammar — you know, the unpleasant things like dependant and independent clauses, nouns, adverbs, prepositions and the like — vocabulary expansion, spelling and phonics, a combination of literary works — from the classics of Shakespeare and Sophacles to the more modern works of Twain, Hemingway Fitzgerald and others — to expository texts and functional works. I do this each and every day with more than 150 students, all of whom have individual learning styles, and many of whom have IEP plans — for those of you who are not familiar with this, it is the IDEA provision that protects students who have learning disabilities as well as students with behavior problems linked to such conditions as ADD/ADHD. Please sit in my classroom and try to manage a class with 30 students and a myriad of protections under both State and Federal law that inherently limit what I can and can not do. I am pleased and proud, by the way, to do this job, and I could not imagine another line of work that I would rather be in. G-d created me to teach, and I believe I do my job admirably.
So then we must address the question of how much I am paid. It amazes me how many people complain that I am overpaid and under worked until they start to tabulate the number of hours I actually teach every school year — 1,321 — plus all the hours I am required to attend after-school trainings — almost 300 in a given academic year from start to finish — plus all the time I have to spend at home grading papers and work that students have completed — and please remember that I teach bell to bell, so if there is anything to assess, I have to take it home with me, which adds up to over 184 hours a year if you assume that all I do is grade 1 hour per evening of the year, and I assure you my wife would take issue with you if you presumed such a thing — plus all the time I have to readjust curriculum because students are either going more quickly than I anticipated or not as quickly as I hoped — let us presume that I only spend one-quarter hour each evening of the work year, which would leave you with 46 extra hours — plus all of the parent-meetings and phone-calls I have to schedule that I assure you are outside of my contract day — and again let us assume only 46 — and you come up with a yearly hourly number of 1,897 hours in a 184 work-day year. Now compare that to an entry-level worker who earns 2 weeks of vacation, and thus works 52 weeks a year at 40 hours per week, totaling 2,080 hours. So basically I am cramming, in 9 months, only 183 fewer hours than a person who works all year, and in all candid honesty, if you really did an accurate assessment of my actual hours, I would likely top that number. But let us presume the more conservative — excuse the unintentional pun — presumption. What are you going to pay me? Are you seriously suggesting that I should be paid only $10 per hour? What other job are you aware of that requires a college degree and constant monitoring of 150 plus people each and every day where $10 an hour is all that is paid? If you were to do a comparative analysis in the Las Vegas valley, I would easily top $60,000 a year for the work and expertise that I bring to my job. I am paid, as they say, far less than this. And I am willing to be so paid, in exchange for a pension system. Now, here too I am eager to engage the libertarian elements of my own party. I say get rid of the defined benefit system and switch it to a defined-contribution, so that I have access to whatever has been paid into the system in its entirety — and here I mean only those contributions that have been paid into the system for me — when I retire. When it is pointed out to these same individuals that this would actually harm the system more, they conveniently blush and clammer that they haven’t really looked at the numbers all that carefully. Please.
I agree that things need to change, and that tough choices need to be made. However, I also believe that we need to look at the entire picture carefully, critically and objectively.
Scott D. Austin
Teacher, Las Vegas
I wanted to explain something from my previous post, concerning the Defined Contribution change and how it would impact the State negatively. My wife works for a bank in Las Vegas. She has a 401(k) retirement plan. She was able to start making contributing to her plan after 6 months, and the company began matching her contributions at 1 year. Whenever she leaves, regardless of whether she leaves of her own volition or is terminated for cause, all of the money that has been contributed, both from her as well as from her employer, is hers in its entirety. Contrast that with the current PERS retirement system, at least for teachers. It takes 5 years of continual service to be vested in the PERS system, and thus entitled to any of the monies therein. If you leave the teaching profession at the end of your 4th year, you are not entitled to any of that money. Thus many of the teachers who leave after 2 or 3 years have had money contributed, but are not legally able to access any of that money. Imagine for a moment if we switched to a defined-contribution system. They would, in fact, be entitled to access or move than money when they left, even if before 5 years. I believe the body politic is ignoring the fact that if we transitioned from benefit to contribution, we would potentially be taking the one avenue we have had for savings.
Scott D. Austin
Teacher, Las Vegas
Scott, thank you for your comments. You are the kind of teacher that I remember growing up. Thank you for being so passionate. And many of us agree that you deserve not only better pay but a good retirement plan, which makes your your second comment so frustrating. You should be able to take out whatever you put in, no matter how long you have worked for the State. I did not know that was the case. That needs to change. I find it ironic that when I worked for the Federal Government, they have the Trift Savings Plan that is more like your wife’s private sector plan. I imagine the state system is set up to protect long time employees, so you’re contribution is paying for their retirement - similar to the Social Security situation. It sure seems like the state should be more like your wife’s plan, and the Federal Governments. That seems to make more sense. Let’s work on our legislators to make changes that work for you and the taxpayers. There has to be a way!!