The following letter has been submitted to The Boston Globe in reference to yesterday’s editorial about pensions.

To the Editor:

The Globe’s editorial on pensions (“New pension bill is laudable, but doesn’t go far enough,” January 25) falsely implies that taxpayers would save money if public employees were moved from a defined-benefit plan – a traditional pension plan – to a private-sector-style retirement system. In fact, such a change would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Public employees in Massachusetts do not participate in Social Security, and that saves Bay State taxpayers huge sums of money.

I can specifically address how this plays out for teachers, who pay, on average, about 10 percent of their incomes toward their own pensions, with the state paying about 2 percent.

If the pension system were eliminated, these teachers would have to be enrolled in Social Security, reducing the employees’ contribution, but increasing the state’s share to 6.2 percent of their salaries at a cost of more than $200 million a year. And that’s not even including the cost of contributing to some kind of 401(k) plan, as the Globe recommends.

There’s a good reason no rational politician has proposed replacing the state’s pension system with a private-sector model: The taxpayers simply can’t afford it.

Paul Toner

Massachusetts Teachers Association

Boston