<p>Most State budgets have more than enough discretionary funds to fully pay their pension obligations. For example in NJ the budget is 33 billion only 5 or 6 billion of that is allocated for operating expenses. There is a certain amount that is used for debt payment but close to $20 billion is discretionary used for various aid programs, political spending, rebate programs etc. Before the pensions that were earned get cut those things would have to be eliminated and those funds used to fund the pension.</p>
<p>The only reason many of those various spending programs existed is because the State used pension contributions to pay for them.</p>
<p>Not that much younger but that doesn’t stop him from reminding me all the time. </p>
<p>I think most of the one’s who retire so young are doing extremely physically demanding or emotionally draining jobs - like police, fire, etc., etc., 30 years in that kind of stressful job is enough, imo. I won’t begrudge them their pensions.</p>
<p>IN NJ the pensions with the early retirement ages have adequate funding, the pensions with the double dipping have adequate funding, the pensions with the pension spiking have adequate funding. The only two pensions without adequate funding allow none of those things and they are the plans where the State missed their contributions for 20+ years.</p>
<p>I readily admit that there are pension outrages that need to be stopped but those outrages have not been fixed instead they were used to blame teachers for a problem they had nothing to do with.</p>
<p>Tom is right. Teacher have to work longer to qualify for full retirement benefits. And NO it’s not their full salary. It is. %age of it based on years of service, and age as of retirement. </p>
<p>As noted, some states have not fully funded their pension funds. This is not here fault of the retirees. These states simply decided NOT to do this funding. Some (like CT) have made up for years of underfunding. I believe they sold bonds (that sold out very quickly) to fully fund the retirement system here.</p>
<p>“Emilybee, it isn’t 30 years. It is 20. Although new tiers are going up in age and service. I think 25/55 is a pretty reasonable compromise.”</p>
<p>Is that 20 years needed to get one’s full pension? It definitely is not 20 years for state employees. Even if H left after 25/55 his pension would take a considerable hit. 10’s of thousands of dollars a year difference. He has to stick it out to 30 - even though he has reached the top of his pay scale and the gov is not even giving MC employees COLA anymore. Unless he gets appointed Commissioner (highly unlikely) doubtful he’ll earn more than he does now. </p>
<p>A bunch of retired NYPD do come to work in H’s division but I think the state finally made double dipping illegal.</p>
<p>Thousands of applicants for one job? In my kids district they start at $34,000 per year. I can’t imagine thousands of people applying for just one of those teaching jobs. The teachers in your district must all hold Phd’s with competition like that. The national test scores must be amazing.</p>
<p>Some of the blame can go on the states, some can go on the retirees. It is nauseatingly common here for teachers to “goose” their pay for their final three years to get the maximum possible pension. I don’t blame them as they are just milking the system legally. However, the pensions are not designed to pay out in that manner. You can blame the retirees for this abuse of the system which leads to some of the underfunding. I just hate having to pay for it, over and over and over…</p>
<p>In a friend’s state agency, he needs to work there a minimum of 20 years to be vested and 30 to get full retirement benefits. He’s currently a couple of years from hitting 20 now. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that in his case, he could have made much more money in the private sector with his skills/training so the retirement benefits combined with some state employee perks is meant to compensate somewhat for the salary/benefit differential. </p>
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<p>The absolute minimum to get retirement benefits for military service is 20 years. Fall even a few weeks or even days before 20 and you get zip unless there’s some rare unusual exceptions.</p>
<p>Parent I can not speak to your State but in NJ overtime or extra job earnings do not count towards the pension for a teacher. What State are you in?</p>
<p>How does one “goose” their salary? here in Maryland, we went through three years of “temporary salary reduction” (aka furloughs) and three years of frozen pay. Goosing my pay sounds good at this point.</p>
<p>I just looked up my retirement formula. I’m not looking at a princely amount. Employees can be vested at five years, if they were hired before 2011. Newer employees ate vested at ten years.</p>
<p>The formula is 0.018 x average of top three salary x years of service. That means if you have 30 years of service, your pension will be a little over half of the average of your top three years.</p>
<p>If I’m lucky, I’ll have 20 years of service (I work part time so my years of service will be pro rated). That means I can expect at best to get about 1/3 the average of my top three years. Needless to say I’ve put money into the optional 401K plan as well. I’m not counting on supporting myself on the pension alone.</p>
<p>I’m in Maryland too and one of our problems is that the counties negotiate salary and benefits with public workers but the state has to pay the pensions. The state is rattling sabers about passing that buck back to the counties and they almost did it last year. It will happen soon enough and it will be a huge expense! </p>
<p>It makes no sense for some county politicians to make grandiose promises that some other political body has to pay for. And, for all those “frozen pay” years, there were decades of irresponsible and rampant spending just before that, particularly in the school system.</p>
Emily, yes. City workers have a totally, totally different circumstance. My brother was a high-level executive in state government who retired three-ish years ago and I can tell you that the state retirement situtation is a totally different thing than the city. And the MTA is different yet again.</p>
Overtime. A lot of my husband’s coworkers who weren’t planning to retire this year did so or are doing so because the department made so much money from overtime related to hurricane Sandy. They worked 12-14 hours a day seven days a week for more than 10 weeks and then worked at will every “chart” (rotating day off and time and a half) and Sunday (double time) up until the summer. The regular salary for senior men is generally between $100-110,000, so you can imagine what all that overtime did to salaries. Plus ever since the Christmas snow debacle, Mayor Bloomberg has been so paranoid about being caught out with snow that he puts plows and spreaders on if the clouds are even thinking about spitting. The last few years have been very good to them.</p>
<p>Teachers can “goose” their salaries by taking on extra responsibilities for which they receive extra pay – club advisor, sports coach, department chair, etc. From what I understand, seniority gives a teacher the right to bump another teacher who may have been holding that position.</p>
<p>It’s been said you can predict which teachers will retire soon by the new club advisor positions they take on.</p>
<p>I think Slackermom was referring to teachers “goosing.” I can’t see how they can do that unless the score a coaching position and there just aren’t that many of them to go around. They don’t get OT for staying late at school. </p>
<p>As for the sanitation workers - if they hadn’t worked all those extra hours after Sandy - people would have been screaming bloody murder. Not to mention it was a huge health hazard. H’s people who were there - mostly engineers and IT people - who are not overtime eligible, but worked 24/7 for weeks, sleeping in their trucks, unable to come home at all, were finally granted special overtime compensation, and, imo, they deserved it. </p>
<p>I wish people would decide what the heck they want. They complain when things which cost a lot of money aren’t done and complain when things which cost a lot of money are done. </p>
<p>They want smaller government, don’t want to pay taxes for services, but go ballistic if services suffer as a consequence.</p>
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