Imperfect PERA reform bill spreads the pain around

Kudos to the Colorado legislature for passing the PERA reform bill and showing that bipartisanship still works in Colorado.

While not everyone in the state is perfectly happy with it, I believe that not everyone will be happy whenever there is shared pain, which this solution may require.

How PERA got where it is was multifaceted and is worthy of remembering as we go forward. One major cause was former Gov. Bill Owens’ saddling PERA with the cost of allowing not only state workers but also all beneficiaries at the time to buy additional service credits at 13 cents on the dollar.

These people bought into it, knowing the bargain they were getting at the expense of all other stakeholders, and have no right to complain about no longer receiving inflated “cost of living payments,” in my view.

Thus, there are many current beneficiaries (most of them now retired) who reaped a benefit from everyone else.

Second: The life expectancy of beneficiaries has increased without this having been recognized in the past, so both beneficiaries and employers didn’t contribute their fair share.

Third: Returns in the market since 2000 haven’t been what they were in the 1990s, which fed unrealistic assumptions. But that is water under the bridge.

Hopefully, Gov. Hickenlooper will sign the bill into law. I believe that the bill, while imperfect, will go a long way to fixing the problem.

Pain is never pleasant, even if it is shared.