Joe, In your October 19 edition of reader Vox Populi retired APD officer Dan Klein expresses his discontent over the recent COLA for PERA retirees and asks his fellow retirees to call on their legislators and the governor to seek a remedy. These retirees, of course, have every right to do so, but they may want to display caution in drawing too much attention to the public retirement system.
Right-wing politicians have been targeting organized labor since the days of Reagan, with a particular eye on public employee unions. Excessive demands at the expense of the taxpayer are not the way to build support.
At a time when few, if any, employees still can participate in a defined benefit program, let alone one with any COLA at all, PERA offers retirement after 25 years at any age with full benefits.
That benefit ranges anywhere from 2 percent per year of service to 3.5 percent per year of service. The benefit is then adjusted for the average salary for the highest consecutive 36 month period. At the top end, a PERA retiree receives just under 90% of their annual salary.
Depending on the specific PERA plan, police and firefighters can retire at any age with full benefits after only 20 years of service, leaving plenty of time for a second career. There are other aspects of the plan that allow buying service credit and in some positions getting 1.2 years of credit for each year worked.
A pension plan is a contract between employers and employees and PERA participants are entitled to what they were promised. But with the plan facing a $7 billion dollar hole in the assets required to pay future benefits, we know who is on the hook to pay the shortfall--the taxpayer. Asking taxpayers to provide further enhancements to a plan they can only dream of having for themselves is not a wise strategy.
Drawing attention to such a generous plan can only result in resistance from taxpayers to continue the massive subsidies that make this possible. Existing retirees are protected from reductions in benefits by federal law, but they risk poisoning the well for those who follow them.
Klein responded:
In 2013 the law was changed. Starting in 2013 anyone who is hired in qualifying police/fire plans have to go 25 years (3% yearly). Not all police and fire plans qualify for the 25 year pension, those that don’t you have to work 30 years (2.5% or 2% yearly depending on the plan).
Civilian plans, for those hired after 2013 are all 30 year plans for retirement, with yearly accrual rates of 2% or 2.5%.
To get 90% a worker in a 3% accrual plan would have to work 30 years. In a 2.5% plan would require 36 years of work. In a 2% plan you would have to work 45 years.
No one hired after 2013 gets a 3.5% accrual or a 20 year retirement. Those plans were closed to new workers 10 years ago.
The 1.2 years of credit are only for state corrections and NMSP.
ADD FIREFIGHTERS
Reader Diana Ochoa reacts to Klein's proposal to reduce the weight requirement to become a police officer:
I would add the ABQ Fire Department (AFR) as they also have too stringent recruitment requirements to join and finish the Fire Academy. It's tied too closely to military training where you are trained to survive as opposed to saving people in trouble. In the Academy they treat you with no respect and it seems they relish in trying to get rid of you for petty infractions. That does not make a better employee in the long run.
Reader and former cop Tom Grover did not care for Klein's weight reform proposal, to put it mildly:
Tell that idiot that reducing physical fitness standards for police officers is not only misguided, dangerous, and ill advised, it’s a dumb idea.
Quit always slouching towards lower standards.
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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2023
(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2023