NOREEN: Ballyhooed PERA bill is D.O.A.
There is an uncaring dark void where political show encounters political reality.
It’s called the Colorado Senate State Affairs Committee. It’s not certain but somewhat likely that a bill enthusiastically backed by Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach and the City Council will soon find itself in that nether region, where it will expire.
The bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs, would allow cities whose workers are in the Public Employees Retirement Association to increase the percentage those employees must contribute to the pension plan. The state PERA pension fund would still get the same amount of money for each employee, because while the employee’s contribution would increase, the contribution from city coffers would decrease.
Thus, city employees would see what amounts to a pay cut while the city’s general fund would benefit. The PERA fund, which has undergone many changes in recent years to make it more solvent, would not gain from Lambert’s bill, because to be more solvent one must have more money.
Senate Majority Leader John Morse, an El Paso County Democrat, opposes Lambert’s bill and said with a chuckle, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this bill goes to State Affairs. One, because it is a state affair and two, because it is such a horrific idea.”
The State Affairs Committee always is stacked with members of the majority party (Democrats) who are loyal to the Senate president — in this case, Sen. Brandon Shaffer, the Longmont Democrat who co-sponsored the PERA reform bill in 2010.
The 2010 PERA legislation, co-sponsored by then-House Majority Leader Josh Penry, a Republican, made life tougher for PERA workers by reducing cost-of-living increases, eliminating the chance they once had to retire early by “buying” years and forcing those hired after 2007 to pay more toward their retirements.
In the Democrat-controlled Colorado Senate, there’s not bound to be much of an appetite in an election year to place more of a burden on the backs of workers who already have been forced to shoulder more of the load.
Morse said conservatives in Colorado Springs “are undermining government pensions in any way they can.”
A certified public accountant, Morse asserts that the city’s plan would only save money in the near term, anyway.
“What Colorado Springs wants to do is to shift over to employee dollars,” he said. “The liability doesn’t go away, it just kicks the can down further down the road, and that’s what the public is so tired of us politicians doing.”
So on Tuesday, City Hall had its political show, passing a toothless resolution to support Lambert’s bill.
Political reality awaits.
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Listen to Barry Noreen on KRDO NewsRadio 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:35 a.m. on Fridays and read his blog updates at gazette.com/barry
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