Steven Wright

I worked for the Department of Environmental Management, Parks and Recreation Department for 36 years, more than half of my life time dedicated to serving the people of Rhode Island and its visitors. Throughout my career I was informed by the Office of Human Resource that upon retirement I would receive my pension with an annual 3% COLA. After retiring in December 2010, the law changed in 2011 eliminating the annual cost of living allowance for all State employees. This has been devastating to me and my family, as my wife and I planned our retirement years based on a percentage of our income with COLA’s for the years of our retirement. With the cost of living outpacing the pension I receive and the small COLA that is provided every few years on the first $30,000.00 of our retirement, this has had a major impact on our finances and is certainly not acceptable in anyone’s judgment. Sadly, I look back at the years of service as a dedicated State Employee when we as a team sacrificed the many hours, days, weekends and holidays of our lives to provide a clean, safe, enjoyable and professionally operated State Park System (while taking furloughs along the way) knowing that at the end of our careers the promises of a sound retirement made to us would be kept. That certainly did not work out and it seems that the formula for the return of our COLA’s is time, and that we do not have.

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