Embrace, protect and plan for retirement

Mary and I regularly receive e-mails asking about our retirement system, especially regarding the loss of gainsharing and the lawsuit. It is not a happy story.

During the past seven or eight years there has been an increased emphasis on the pension system of school employees in Washington state. Under the last governor and legislature, a lot of games were played with the funding of the retirement trust fund. In an effort to deal with the funding problem in the last legislative session, we lost gainsharing. We tried to trade it for something of equal or greater value to our members, but we were stymied by the needs of the legislature. At the direction of the Representative Assembly, WEA filed a lawsuit.

Understanding a retirement system, and explaining how it works is not at all straight forward, and actuaries joke about how people’s eyes glaze over when retirement calculations are explained. Just recently, I attended a seminar on public sector retirement funds. I found out how different public sector is from private sector. It’s like trying to apply baseball rules to football. They are both sports, but they are different. If you are only familiar with the private sector, you are not aware how the logical rational ideas you embrace are actually ridiculous when applied to the radically different world of the public sector.

I am chair of the WEA committee on retirement issues. As I said, retirement is very complicated and most legislators do not understand the full implications of a public employee retirement system, they only see a pot of money in the trust fund. The beneficiaries of the retiree trust fund also see things very simply, their retirement check. And the irony is that those who have the most to lose, the new young employees, are the least vocal in expressing their needs.

Since we are suing the state about retirement, I do not anticipate any movement in the legislature regarding any aspect of retirement. That could leave our retirement committee with little to do. However, I don’t want to wait for the legislature to act

There are lots we can do, not only to anticipate further attacks on retirement, but to be pro-active, to be stronger. A key piece is to start educating our members on retirement issues, and what they can do. We can also educate the legislators on what retirement means to us, and its positive impact on the economy of the state.

A lack of information creates a void which is quickly filled by the paranoid vapors of conspiracies. We need to get information out. By we, I am talking about myself, the committee, and every member of WEA. It will be at least a couple of years before the courts give us a decision, but we should not wait until then to be better informed and to act in areas that will yield results. Remember, retirement is an important issue, but it is not the only issue.

If you have questions or things you would like to know more about on retirement, send them to me and I will bring them to the committee. I have asked our legal department to prepare a summary of the effects of the legislation which repealed gainsharing and I will make that available to members. What can you do? E-mail House Speaker Chopp and all your legislators. Tell them to restore the “Dino cuts” in our COLA. Any increase in our salaries now will eventually help your pension. And let them know you are angry about losing ground in your pension. Be polite, but be firm. In addition send your comments on our pension to the Select Committee on Pension Policy.