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Adam West, star of TV’s ‘Batman,’ has died at 88

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David and Donna Baloga celebrate 35th wedding anniversary

<p>Don&#8217;t let the naysayers fool you, the bill passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature this week &#8212; it may have been signed into law by the time you read this &#8212; <em>is</em> pension reform. It dramatically revamps the benefits for most state and all public school employees in the near future, and that is <em>long</em> overdue.</p><p>But don&#8217;t let the politicians fool you. This is <em>not</em> a solution to an acute financial crisis that they created and then ignored for a decade, letting it grow like like Japanese knotweed planted on a grassy river bank. This bill does nothing to alleviate the enormous shortfall in the state&#8217;s pension funds &#8212; one for state employees, a much larger one for teachers.</p><p>So, it&#8217;s more than what Harrisburg often does &#8212; you know, pass some bill with great fanfare that actually does next to nothing. But it is less than what needs to be done.</p><p>The bill should reduce future pension liabilities by offering teachers and public servants three choices involving defined benefits (as they have now) and defined contributions (payroll set-asides into retirement savings accounts).</p><p>That&#8217;s realistic. No one paid with tax dollars deserves a pension that guarantees up to 100 percent of their salary after they stop working &#8212; at least, no one deserves it unless all of us get it. And please don&#8217;t say you &#8220;work hard&#8221; for it, many people work just as hard for far less.</p><p>For most of us, retirement is, at best, a three-legged stool: A defined benefits pension plan, social security and whatever you manage to save on your own or through payroll deductions.</p><p>Such a system keeps all your proverbial retirement eggs out of one basket. If something happens to one of the three legs, you still have two streams of retirement income.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The three-legged system also reduces the perception that those with lower incomes &#8212; and often, these days, with no defined benefits pension &#8212; are paying for the lavish retirement of public employees.</p><p>Bluntly, it can be infuriating for taxpayers on modest salaries to pay taxes that help public educators and politicians retire with 75 percent to 100 percent of their wages &#8212; especially if those wages are higher than anything the taxpayer earns.</p><p>It may be easier to write that check knowing said public employee has to save money to get anything above a guaranteed 50 percent of pay upon retirement.</p><p>So, yeah, the change is for the better. It is, alas, not for the best.</p><p>Still unaddressed: money needed for existing state public pension obligations, estimated &#8212; depending on who you ask and when &#8212; to run as high as $76 million in red ink. The new bill does nothing to resolve that problem, which is making school district contributions to the pension fund skyrocket.</p><p>Until that shortfall is adequately fixed, the impact of Harrisburg&#8217;s inane vote in 2001 to increase pension benefits will remain, choking school district budgets for years if not decades.</p><p>It&#8217;s as if Harrisburg has been kicking a soda can and an oil barrel down the road, and finally decided to get rid of the soda can.</p><p>&#8212; Times Leader</p><style>
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Our view: A first step in pension reform, but more needed