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If you want to change it for the current state employees that’s up to the leg and the current employees can work under those guidelines or leave.  It’s up to them.

Some options to look at changing are.
1.  Drop the lump sum option after 28.5 years you can now draw out up to 3 years in one payment but it reduces your take home for the rest of your life.
2.  Don’t make the retirement based on your high 4 years but an average salaray over your entire career.  Now you can work for 21 years at 20k a year and get lucky and get a 90k job for your last 4 and retire at the 90 K base.  Where an average would lower that.

I don’t mind it changing but do it to those getting in the system now with an option to get out or continue under the new rules.  Don’t lie to those that have given their lives to the state making terrible salaries and then stab them in the back after they retire.

Whatever promises retirees have, raising the contribution levels for present employees doesn’t break it.  When you have a defined contribution plan, the benefits vary.  When you have a defined benefits plan, the contributions vary.

So tell me again what’s the benefit of compromise?

I’m not aware of the VA, but take it at face value.

And on your B, that’s an idea.  That’s all I’m saying, some type of idea to bridge the transition.

I agree that we have a mess.  Among many others.  I’m all for changing directions and have been for decades.  And I’m not just talking about what’s right, but what can we actually get done.  But based on your last post, I don’t think you’re on such a different page regarding that after all.

A.  “But if gov’t. is going to break its contract with current retirees (and like it or not, it’s changing the rules after the fact, not keeping their word),”

Well private companies change their plans daily, weekly, yearly.  Why should Government be excluded?  Government employees are not a protected class to my knowledge.

The VA does not guaranteed medical benefits to veterans for example but it used to.  Get the drift?

B.  “(Some of the talk almost sounds like envy over what public employees get, in my honest opinion.  Not the desire to find a solution.)

I have no envy of what the public employees receive; I believe it is wrong to ask the taxpayer to fund someone else’s retirement pension when they trying to fund their own.

The government should offer the state employees a buyout, just like the private companies do.  If the employees are not satisfied, settle it in court. 

The bottom line is that Demos and Rino’s are the major causes of this socialistic program, that should have been abolished many years ago, but they didn’t have the fortitude to do it, because they were afraid they wouldn’t be re-elected.

Hammer no I have not gotten a 13th check yet.  You make that option when you retire and the first one is not paid until about 18 months later.  That is if you retire on June 30.  It cal be as much as 23 months later if you retire at the wrong time.  You can also chose to have the so called 13th check split and added to your monthly checks but again that decision is made at retirement time.  It’s 3 % if under 55 and compounded like 3.3% after 55.  SSN does have cost of living increases during some years.  They may call it something different but it’s in the system.  Face it a little ole lady school teacher that retires making about 10 grand will not be able to live on 5 grand the rest of her life.  I’ve heard of some that get as much in the 13th check as their regular retirement.  But we are talking about little money because state workers are normally underpaid.

I worked 31 years because I loved the job and liked helping my fellow tax payer.  Don’t forget us state workers are state tax payers too.  Not all state workers are there because they are too lazy to get a job in the real world.

Until the last couple decades or so, defined-benefits was the norm.  In the private sector as well.  The private sector has (wisely, in my opinion) shifted towards defined-contributions instead.  The public sector mostly hasn’t (there are exceptions, IN, for ex.), but should (in my opinion and I believe a majority exists for a shift, including among public employees probably, just devil in details of the transition).

But if gov’t. is going to break its contract with current retirees (and like it or not, it’s changing the rules after the fact, not keeping their word), there will be a pushback and there is some righteousness in it.  If the conservative side (my side) is simply going to equate that with the same as wanting ZERO change in the system EVER, they are setting themselves up poorly in the debate IMO.  (Some of the talk almost sounds like envy over what public employees get, in my honest opinion.  Not the desire to find a solution.)  It’s not the fault of people who worked under a system to take what they were given as their only option.

The debate should only focus on how do we transition out of it.  It seems honorable that current retirees have the contract honored.  It also seems reasonable that near-retirees do as well.  It seems crystal clear that new hires should go into a new, defined-contributions system.  Argument is just over what (who) is in between and how to fund the transition.  If that’s not agreed upon as the basis for discussion, I believe it’s an over-reach (by my side of the political spectrum) and will tarnish a good idea and a necessary change.

do you or have you received a cost of living increase with your pension?

do you or have you received a 13th. check while drawing your state pension?

is it the taxpayers fault that you chose to work for low wages?

and lastly,

Why do you think it’s right for the taxpayers to have to pay for your pension, when the taxpayer is having to pay for their own.

Changes to this have or about to be made to require some matching be paid in by the agency to the retirement system.  But even under the new system the agency budget most likely is better off with a highly qualified person working at half salary.

He/she is bored so they get a job at the auditor’s office or MSU as an investigator or campus police.  They work for 25 years or until they can retire at 62 age.  They can draw a retirement check for this service.  And they drew a retirement check while they worked there from the highway patrol service.

Why can they do this???  Well because they are seperate retirement systems.  No different than if the person had worked for the state of alabama and moved here and worked after retirement.  Or the person flipped burgers at mcdonalds for 25 years and retired.  They paid into both system what they were required to so they should be entitled to their benefits.

Double dipping in this case is not causing either system to go in the red.  They are paying out exactly what they were designed to pay.  The shortfall is because the stock markets are not paying at the rates they use to.

I hope this simple example helps some.

So in the future when you wreck and no highway patrolman shows up or when the bridge falls in with no state crews to repair it you are ok.  You make a deal with a very badly paid person to work for the state and they do so for their entire life and now you want to line up and stab them in the backs???  Why not just shoot all of us when we hit retirement age?

Lets not forget ever one of us state workers was also a state tax payer our entire working career.  I paid as much as you in state taxes.