James Bedell

Pension Education: 3 facts that have not been brought to your attention

Madams and Sirs,

The three new inputs:

#1. People who were already retired are the ONLY group that had NO choices with regard to ameliorating the disaster of having their contractually earned COLA stolen. They are, and will be, spending the next 15 years without their COLA. Most of them will be dead by the time the COLA is officially reinstated. It borders on the disgusting that the dying of the already retired pensioners is freeing up more money to go into the political coffers. And here is a fact that has not been brought up adequately. That fact is that the people who had retired in the years before the law was changed had only taken the job because of that COLA protection for retirement. We were the people who took those jobs in the 1970's, when inflation was double digits. In a significant measure we were drawn to the job and we signed up for the job because all around us people were being crushed by the inflation rate in that decade. It just adds to the irony of it all that the exact people whom the state got to work for them because of the COLA promise are the ones to be most adversely affected. They had not made any plans to weather inflation in their retirement without a cola because they had a COLA in their contract... which they had completed!

#2. Marijuana money

Funding source for making the already retired people whole:

An independent site (The tax foundation, since 1937) has all states mentioned, said after 3 years of running the program, Rhode island, based on its number of pot users, will be making 35 million a year. That's every year. That's forever! What the government is doing is subtracting all of the startup costs for administrating and building that program from the estimated first year's income to come up with a ridiculously low number of five to seven million.

I couldn't be more emphatic in my opinion that the real numbers showing how much will be generated each year is something that would make difference. I imagine that legislators have already fantasized about what to do with the money, but it is new money coming into the state that didn't come in before. Also shedding some light on the chicanery being played by the state in hiding the true income should be illuminated.

#3. R.I. Mandated CPA test- "mandated defined benefit pension responsibilities" clearly stated.

This item springs from what I learned after securing a copy of the “Securities Training Corporation” study materials for financial planners in RI.



My quest to find these came from my complete outrage that my financial planners throughout life had assured me repeatedly that my COLA was “money in the bank” as far as making life decisions such as deciding what house we could afford, where we could afford to send our kids to college, how big a nest egg we had to put away, etc. I kept digging with the question in mind, is this just an industry standard, or is this some kind of rule or law that the state of RI has set up?

When, on page S66 10-26 of the study guide, I came upon the definition of the employer’s responsibility in defined benefit plans as including the following, I was rocked to the core.

It reads: quote...

“With defined benefit plans, the employer is responsible for all of the following activities:

•Funding the plan and making contributions based on actuarial assumptions

•Investing the plan’s funds

•Bearing all of the investment risk

• Providing benefits even if the plan’s investments perform below expectations”



It occurred to me that this information could/should/would have some meaning for our case.



I may be taking liberty of your offer of open communication with us appellants, but I cannot get any peace of mind until I know you have given this twist some thought.



Please address the points below, which represent a logical chain of responsibility (as I understand it) forged from this study guide information:



1. To be a financial planner in RI you must pass a test approved by the state

2. The company which administers the test (Securities Testing Corporation), under contract with the State of RI, provides the information on which the person will be tested

3. To pass the test prospective financial planners are required to adhere to the information presented in the study guide

4. If they pass the test, they are required to adhere to these rules in advising their future clients

So… the state of RI has commanded that we citizens be told that the bulleted items above are true, that our defined pension benefits are indeed “money in the bank”, and we have lived our lives accepting, counting on, what our state has ordered be told to us. Then the state takes our pension away from us after we have already finished offer contract and retired.

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