Yessir we got trouble, right here in River City
Monday, February 9th, 2009 By Mike MaurerFolks in Connecticut are upset that public employees are retiring and then going back to work, effectively giving themselves raises of from 30 percent to 100 percent.
The great blogger Glen Reynolds notes, “I don’t blame people who do this if they’re entitled — but that people can do this so often helps explain why public pensions are so burdened.”
He’s exactly right. It’s foolish, and frankly illegal, to say to someone, “work according to these terms, and you’ll be paid according to these terms,” and then not follow through on those terms. If we tell public workers that after some period, 30 years, 25 years, 15 years, whatever, that they are then entitled to 100 percent, 60 percent, 25 percent, whatever portion of their pension, well, a deal’s a deal. It is hypocritical, stupid and illegal to do otherwise.
And yet, that’s how we think of it. Several years ago there was a “scandal” about judges doing this. They’d get to the point of qualifying for a pension that could start Jan. 1. They’d get relected the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Then they’d retire, triggering their pension. Then they’d get sworn in Jan. 1 and go back to work at full salary.
This ticked people off. As I recall the chief justice made some pronouncements and maybe required public notice or some such.
Early on in my reporting career I did a story about a popular assistant principal who was retiring after a long career. I did a nice story on him. And then a month later I saw he was still on the payroll. Retire rehire. Perfectly fine, but it sure taught me a lesson.
Bottom line, you tell someone they get a pension when they work their time, guess what? They get the pension. Whether they go back to work isn’t really relevant. WHy shouldn’t they?
But here’s the thing: People are rightly ticked off, just for the wrong reason. Retire rehire isn’t the issue. The issue is, why do people who live off the taxpayer get better benefits than the taxpayers? We shouldn’t be upset that people followed their contracts; we should be upset that they got favorable contracts to begin with. That’s a problem, and it’s a big problem and it’s getting bigger. Let’s hear from all the folks who believe in “social justice” about that one because, as always, it’s the poor who take it in the neck. They are paying taxes through the nose, not getting jobs because of poor tax policy, not getting the favored government jobs, and getting nothing out of it except more expense and more self-righteous bureaucracy to control their lives.
If you have doubts, Reynolds also fishes out this:
The common presumption is that public servants forgo high wages in exchange for safe jobs and benefits. The reality is they get all three. State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33% higher than the private sector’s $19, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42%.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Bravo ……. well said …… “The issue is, why do people who live off the taxpayer get better benefits than the taxpayers?”
It is wrong to tax people (Private Sector workers) who make market wages in order to subsidize people (Civil Servants) who, by virtue of their union clout, have been able to negotiate wages and benefits well above the prevailing market.
Civil Servants are the energizer bunny’s of greed and the self-serving, vote-selling, contribution-soliciting, politicians are their enablers.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:57 am
The problem with changing the public employee pension largesse is that we may have passed a tipping point at which the public employee unions control elections. i reside in Cook County Illinois, which includes Chicago. According to the Dept of Labor, there are around 800,000 government employees in Illinois. I suspect most of them are in Cook County, unionized and very well pensioned. I suspect a headcount including active public employees, retirees and their dependents would yield a remarkably high number all of whom will turn out and work elections. A don’t forget union campaign contrubutions. The result? Just a bit of voter apathy ensures union friendly candidates and election results.
As some people say, what we have here is a public employee union oligarchy supported by a kleptocracy.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Unbeknownst to them, one of the biggest losers in this structure will be the younger Civil Servants. It seems fairly evident (Taxpayer revolt, etc.) that pensions & particularly retiree health care benefits will need to be reduced, even for CURRENT employees. The contributions of the younger Civil Servants will pay for the higher beneifts of the old fogies, litle little, if anything for them.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
The city of Las Vegas produced a similar series of reports. They are using them as their platform for lobbying the Stage government.
http://www.lvchamber.com/government/reform-agenda.aspx
Bill Tufts
Fair Pension for All
February 10th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
That’s some nice commentin’. Thanks.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Do regular government employees have a fair deal? For them and the taxpayers that pay them? With just a little digging, it is easy to find hard-working, productive government employees who are well worth it. Of course, with the same digging, you can find government employees who are not worth anything.
But–back to the double-dipping. It is a disgrace. People retire one day, and the next day they are at the same job, but being paid twice! Sorry–but we are all replaceable, and all will be replaced eventually.
Further, this practice undermines public confidence in the government–hardly something that needs additional undermining. This practice should be banned!
February 11th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Wow, TL, this is interesting. On the dd issue, you seem to be taking what I’d guess most people think is the conservative side, “this is terrible,” etc. Of course I’ve made my position clear, it’s perfectly fine. Do they have that contract or not? If they do, so be it. I don’t know if anyone would see that as liberal, but it’s surely conservative: a contract is a contract, property is property.
On your first paragraph, though, it seems to me you revert to form: government employees are angels (of course I’m not being fair; you do note that there are perhaps as many slackers as underpaid folks). On balance, I’d say the Reynolds-cited article is correct, that these folks pretty much have the best of all worlds: higher pay, more job security and fewer job duties. Not to mention crazy pensions and health care, way better than everyone else. Do they have troubles? No doubt. But I doubt their troubles are worse than the rest of us drones who work in the private sector.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
On the double dipping: Sure, it’s legal and who can blame someone for taking advantage of it? My problem is that it is allowed. The PERS rules in Ohio are set by statute, and are changed all the time. I would support a change.
Are government jobs good jobs? You betcha! All the more reason to limit the pay to one salary at a time.
Still, my point was only that at least for the good employees, they are a good value. It is probably too difficult to fire many poor employees. I read somewhere that removing 6% of teachers would eliminate 50% of the problems (or something like that), and I would not be surprised if that held true in other sutuations.
Is this liberal or conservative? I believe that government should perform funtions that you probably think it should not perform. Chalk me up as liberal there. But I also think that government has an obligation to the citizens to perform those functions well–that the purpose of a government function is to provide a service for the citizens, not to provide jobs to the incompetent and the corrupt. I would think that both liberals and conservatives would agree that once a government is performing some sort of function, it ought to perform it well.
OK–so on to unions. I think governmental unions gain more power than private unions because the managers in government do not hold the interests of management as strongly as managers in the private sector. This is because the public sector managers are (1) temporary and (2) bargaining away other people’s money. Over time, the unions gain the advantage because they are more steadfastly pursuing the goals of their membership.
Is this “liberal” or “conservative?” The unions are tied to the Democrats, so the tendency is to think of those who support public unions as liberals. In terms of political thought, though, I am not so sure. In many ways, unions tend to preserve the status quo, and in that regard, might be considered conservative.
I’m really carrying on tonight! One more thought. School choice–liberal or conservative? Those in favor of school choice are still in favor of free education for all–still kind of socialist, no? But they think that by tearing down calcified institutions and freeing up choice and creativity, the education will be, at least on average, better. Are these people conservative? And are those that staunchly defend the status quo liberal? I’m not so sure.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Choice in schools, whether they be private, public, or home-schooled is a conservative principle. Liberal, by definition, means to be open to new ideas, so you can’t say that school choice is a liberal or conservative view. The statist who like to call themselves liberal are definetely not pro-school choice.
Statists (Believe everything is the governments responsibility) want to make sure everyone is limited to only government education to make sure everyone is on the same LEVEL of education, instead of having competing educational institutions that would produce better students and strive for higher grades and excellence.
It’s about controlling the future generations of Americans to be sheep.
It’s about ELIMINATING the “inequalities” of different educations (smart vs. stupid) and LOWERING everyone to the same level. A sad, sad state that our country is currently suffering from. A prime example of this is multiple choice questions vs. essay style tests.
In order to pass an essay style test, the student must have a good grasp of the subject matter and say, in his/her own words the answer to the question. The teacher then has to grade that answer as right or wrong. The problem is that it takes too much brain power for teachers to grade tests, and they would rather use a scan machine or a cheat sheet to grade tests.
The multiple choice questions GIVE the answer to the student. So, AUTOMATICALLY is have a 1 in 4 chance of getting the answer right, without ever having studied the subject matter.
Throwing more taxpayer money at schools and expecting them to fix themselves is just enabling future failures. When you give the parents the choice to send their kids elsewhere, you are sending a clear message to schools that if they do not do their jobs will they will become bankrupt.