I taught music at North Providence High School for 29 years. I retired in 1997 to answer a call to full time ministry. At the time I was promised an 3% annual COLA as part of my retirement package. Like so many other teachers, I had faithfully paid into the retirement system fully expecting that the state would keep its promise which it did not. Although I have had some years of paid church staff work and my wife has been able to work at times, the broken promise has affected us deeply.

Hello and thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you regarding the proposed improvements to the teacher pension system.

My name is Scott Breguet and I have been a Woonsocket Police officer since Nov. 2009. I was hired as a police officer when the demand to become a police officer was so high that applicants were told to apply to every department, that it might take years for someone to be hired as a police officer. Times have changed and Rhode Island departments are now exhausting their hiring lists in less than a year. In addition to hiring troubles, retention issues also plague RI police departments.

I am one of the active Rhode Island employees who has severely felt the impact of the Pension Overhaul under Governor Raimondo. I have been a state employee for 30 years with the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission. When I began work for the state, I was promised a pension. The pension and other benefits were the reason I gave up a business and took a substantial pay cut to work for the state. My husband was self-employed and the security that the state job offered was very important.

I retired from the Providence Public School Department in June 2011. My decision to retire was based on numerous factors happening concurrently in Providence ( all teachers were fired, my school closed and a new position was not guaranteed to me). After serious consideration, I chose to retire. I fully expected to receive a COLA which was part of my pension when I retired. The pension changes occurred in November 2011. I was truly blindsided by these changes! Had I been made aware of these impending drastic COLA changes, my decision to retire would have been different.

Thank you for this opportunity to voice my opinion about the 2011 pension reform bill. As a Police Officer in the City of Woonsocket, I paid an additional 1% of my weekly paycheck specifically for the COLA. The pension reform bill not only suspended the COLA, but for all intended purposes stole the money that I had been contributing for this benefit.

I want to address the issue of the Rhode Island State Police Retirees Cola situation and give you a little background on what we all went through to earn our Cola.

When I joined the State Police in 1960, we worked 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, and had to sleep in a barracks, not allowed to be with our families.

We had two days off a week if we were lucky because if a situation occurred, we were not granted our days off.

We were not granted holiday pay or overtime pay, we just had to work the additional days and hours with no additional compensation.

As the pension advisory group winds down, a recommendation will be forthcoming. If the recommendation is based only on financials the COLA will not be restored. If it is based on ethics it will be. I have written to many of the state leaders and General Assembly members. Invariably the response is - they are waiting for the PAWG recommendation. The power to make right what was wrongfully taken away is in your hands.

I am a municipal police officer for the City of Woonsocket. Our pension payment weekly is tied to how many hours we work. Officers that work overtime shifts pay more into a pension that will only return a set amount, and without recent cost of living increases for many years. In addition, my pension will be eroded by the rising costs of health coverage in retirement as our City does not fix the cost upon retirement. COLAS offset that unfortunate additional cost yearly.

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As I begin to “plead my case” I am somewhat hesitant. The reason I am hesitant is because I think this is, most likely, an exercise in futility just as the pension hearings I attended many years ago were. Those hearings were a “fait accompli.”

They were over before they started. The fix was in.

Anyway, because I am a sucker for punishment, I’ll tell you my story.