Robert Holmes

"Pension Reform" was an ex-post-facto shafting of already-retired public employees. In my case, I retired a year short of 35 in order to ensure that I qualified for the 3% COLA, since I worked for Human Resources and anticipated that changed were coming. I did NOT anticipate that a benefit could be taken away from an already-retired person receiving an EARNED (and paid for) benefit that was part of a condition of employment retirement plan. Consequently, I took a home equity loan to make improvements to my home and property in preparation for my retirement years. The COLA benefit, over the years, would have fully paid off this loan. Instead, I am now paying 9% interest on a loan that I have only been able to partially pay off. For several years I have been unable to pay down the equity and have been barely able to keep up with the interest payments. We have done so by cutting back on food, clothing and utilities. We keep the house at 62 degrees in the winter and do not use air conditioning in the summer (which doesn't help my chronic asthma). All of this is exacerbated by runaway inflation and the paltry and occasional COLAs the "reform" legislation provides. So, aside from the equity loan, we have lost over 25% of our buying power in the last decade. I can only add one observation: I have friends who are retired teachers without Social Security. What "pension reform" has done to them is almost unforgivable.

why is it that Police, Fire and Judicial are exempt, but teachers have to suffer? The State received a great deal of COVID Relief money from the Feds; none of it reached retirees, who are serious economic victims of the pandemic. Apparently the Treasury is doing just fine and the State budgets, which have been balanced for years on the backs of retirees, have all kinds of money for indigent and social service programs, but not a dime to divert to people who committed their careers to public service. I can understand how this can justified politically - we old ones are dying out and that's not where the votes are anymore. But it is ethically, morally, and perhaps legally indefensible. I urge the Committee and the Treasurer to do something to help out what is increasingly a group elder poor, all, bluntly, thanks to "pension reform."

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