Lisa Fresolone

Hello- I began my career with the State of Rhode Island in 1987, what I signed up for back then is no longer in existence. At that time if you worked 28 full time years for the state you could retire at any age with 60% of your last 3 years of employment or 34 full time years for the state you could retire with 80% of your last 3 years. That 3 years was changed to 5 years in both scenarios. I feel these changes should have started with new hires not employees who had been working or were vested. That also changed from being vested after 10 years to 5 years.

I have worked for the state of Rhode Island for 36 years, 10 years were parttime. When I started working full time I investigated buying back my parttime years and was told I couldn't. I never understood why, I know of employees who worked as lifeguard's, City or Town Solicitor's and numerous other types of jobs that were parttime and not always working for the state were able to buy back their time.

Unfortunately, with all the changes that have been made I don't know at what age I will be ABLE to retire financially, never mind ELIGIBLE to retire! I will be lucky if I get 40% of my pay and the amount of money in TIAA is very sad. Hence the reason I will have to work. This is not how I thought my twilight years would be. I would be happy to just receive the pension I was told State Employes's would receive never mind the COLA that was promised.

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