Senate to release pension bill

Message from MTA President Paul Toner and Vice President Tim Sullivan:

We have been made aware that the Senate plans to release its version of a pension bill on Friday and likely will vote on it next week. We do not yet know the details of the plan, though we have been told that it seeks to achieve savings from future employees and not from current employees or retirees. If a bill is approved by the Senate, it will then go to the House for consideration.

We will analyze the Senate pension bill as soon as it is available. We expect to have the analysis done by Sunday, at which time we will send you information about the bill, an action plan and a message to forward to members.

Meanwhile, it is important for MTA leaders and members to continue to send in their postcards on this issue and to contact their legislators via e-mail by going to: http://www.capwiz.com/nea/ma/issues/alert/?alertid=53243501&type=ST

Below are some basic facts about the current pension system.

Public Employee Pensions Are a Good Deal for Taxpayers

No Justification for Cutting Future Public Employee Pensions in Massachusetts

Educators and other public employees in Massachusetts pay nearly all of the costs of their own pensions. There is no justification for cutting the pension benefits for future public employees who will work in our schools, colleges and universities and serve their communities in countless other ways. Among other things, making such a change will hurt our efforts to attract and retain the high-quality educators we need to make sure every student can succeed.

Our pension system is a bargain.

Taxpayers save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by not paying into Social Security on behalf of public employees.

Public employees fund the vast majority of their own benefits. Teachers hired since 1996 pay 11 percent of their salaries toward their pensions, funding 95 percent of the costs, while the state funds just 5 percent – with the remaining resources coming from investment returns.

Our pensions are not “overly generous.”

Public employee pensions are reliable, but far from excessive.

The average state employee pension is about $28,000 a year, and the average teacher and school administrator pension is about $38,000 a year. Public employees receive only a small cost-of-living adjustment on their pension benefits.

Don’t punish future employees for past mistakes.

The state’s unfunded pension liability was incurred over many decades, mainly because the system was funded on a pay-as-you-go basis prior to 1983. The unfunded liability will be paid off by 2040 at the latest.

Future employees, like those recently hired, will be funding the vast majority of their own pension benefits themselves. There is no justification for cutting their benefits to pay off the unfunded liability that was created long before they were ever hired.