Pensions
The Providence Republican City Committee has posted the complete video of Gary Morse’s presentation on “Rhode Island’s Rising Pension Tide” on their YouTube channel. You can view the first part by clicking below: Since Roland Lavallee, who made the official recording for the Providence Republicans, got much better sound quality than I did, I will…
Time will tell whether I’m an isolated cold heart or part of a growing swell, but I’m having trouble mustering the sympathy that the preferred storyline implies I should feel for public-sector pensioners. The “human angle” that the Providence Journal tried to emphasize in an article yesterday provides an excellent example: In fact, [Donald] Cardin,…
In his Monday tip-sheet, Ian Donnis of WRNI (1290AM) reviewed some of the details coming from the second meeting of State Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s “pension advisory panel”. The second item from the post includes a quote from panel member Robert Walsh, Executive Director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association…The math is…
General Treasurer Gina Raimondo reveals that the RI Disability Pension record-keeping system hasn’t been up to snuff (via ProJo): In 2009, 18 percent of the 559 disability files lacked paperwork that is supposed to be filed yearly showing that the worker is still disabled and how much money they have earned in addition to their…
See, this is exactly the wrong starting point for resolving the state’s pension problems; indeed, it’s indicative of the wrong approach to government in general: All of these ideas and more were batted about on Monday during the first meeting of the new Pension Advisory Group that state Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo, a Democrat, created…
G.B. Short’s letter to the ProJo is worth highlighting. He went to the Pension Advisory Group meeting about which I’ve already expressed some skepticism. Let’s just say his first hand, real person account does little to alleviate my reservations. First, about the makeup of the members: Early on in the meeting it was stated that…
So said Alicia Munnell of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and one of the 12 appointed to the RI Pension Advisory Group. Munnell elaborated further: “I strongly believe that [the private sector model shouldn’t be followed],” she repeated after the 2 1/2 -hour meeting, “because what you have seen in the private…
The stunning thing about this pension reform proposal from Republican state representatives Patricia Morgan and Michael Chippendale is that it wasn’t the way the system was set up to work from the beginning: With these two objectives in mind, we have introduced HR-6193. This legislation lets an injured employee receive a disability pension under the…
… which includes $83,000 a month in disability pensions. And that item could have been even higher, if you can believe it, but Pawtucket has an enlightened – by Rhode Island standards – rule that shifts disability pensioners over to a regular pension at retirement age. (So there are cities and towns which do not…
If you skipped the historical essay to which Marc linked on Monday, give it a read. It concerns the making of the pension mess in Providence, and its most valuable insight, in my view, is the light that it shines on the entire dynamic created by public sector unions. The defining statement comes from firefighter…