Projo Politics Blog

At its last meeting March 12, the special House study-commission also recommended curbs on the 3 percent, compounded annual cost-of-living increases for retirees; using a five-year salary average - instead of the current three-year average - to calculate an employee's pension benefit and creating a new "hybrid'' pension system for newly hired teachers and state employees that couples a much-reduced defined-benefit plan with a government-style 401k.

The panel also recommended reducing the disability benefit available to workers who are not "permanently and totally disabled'' from any employment from the current 66.7 percent of pay to 50 percent.

Those already eligible for retirement would be exempt from most if not all of the new rules.

The final report also reflects a proposal about which there was little discussion: the resurrection of "a standing committee'' to deal exclusively with pension issues in the legislature.

The dismantling of the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Retirement was considered one of the major reforms that helped end the costly era of special pension deals.

This was the committee where, in the waning hours of a legislative session, lawmakers met to cut deals. In late March 1993, the House voted unanimously in favor of a bill sponsored by current House Majority Whip Peter Kilmartin to abolish the committee, which had become identified with pension abuses, including legislators' being able to pad their pensions by purchasing credits in the state retirement system at a fraction of the full actuarial value. (State lawmakers are no longer eligible to receive pensions, though some former lawmakers still collect.)

By the time the bill passed, Kilmartin, D-Pawtucket, said it was largely symbolic because lawmakers had not tried to pass questionable pension legislation since The Journal-Bulletin published a 1991 series detailing pension abuses.

But, "With the pension abuses of the past behind us, I thought it would be good for a new reform Assembly to pass this repeal of the Joint Committee as a symbol and to show that we do in fact want to deal with pension issues in a proper manner," Kilmartin said at the time.

In the years since, all pension bills have been sent to the House Finance Committee, which considers all legislation that has an impact on state finances.

According to the minutes of the pension commission's last meeting, the move to resurrect a legislative pension committee was made by Rep. Timothy Williamson, the West Warwick Democrat who chaired the panel.

Williamson said the creation of such a committee was justified "because of the expense we have every year for the budget...it's impossible to ignore.'' The vote was 14-1, with AFL-CIO secretary treasurer George Nee voting nay.

Rhode Island public employees - and their union leaders - packed a State House hearing room last Friday in an effort to head off any changes in their anticipated pension benefits which they contend they earned by paying among the highest public employee contribution rates in the country: state employees, 8.75 percent of their pay; teachers 9.5 percent of their pay.

But those rates have not changed in more than a decade, while the required taxpayer contribution to sustain those benefits has hit double-digit levels.

The pension study commission's pension-cutting package would cut the required taxpayer contribution from a projected 25.03 percent to 19.43 percent for state employee pensions and from 23.88 percent to 18.25 percent for teacher pensions.