After working for decades, PERA recipients deserve full pensions
I find it distressing that PERA retirees are regarded so cavalierly by your editorial and by the politicians who suck up salaries and benefits from taxpayers as well. As an educator for 40 years, I had no choice but to join PERA and was promised a retiree package if I fulfilled my obligations. After years of substandard pay, I looked forward to a modest pension, only to find that this promise was hollow. I cannot regain the 25 years I put into my career. I would imagine that any young person would not want to pursue the teaching profession — low pay, overbearing bureaucracy, and a retirement plan that is only binding on one side. No wonder there is a teacher shortage. A 1.25 percent yearly raise does not cover inflation or rising health care costs and my small retirement check shrinks. And I cannot go back to teaching or working for any Pera-affiliated organiza- tion. If I work for more than 110 days, my pension is taken away, according to the rules. The rules make one exception — no penalty if I become a politician. Go figure. George Gertz, Broomfield
As a young man fresh out of graduate school, I went to work for the state of Colorado knowing I could make more money in the private sector. In my mind, the promise of a decent pension that would keep up with inflation helped balance out the lower salary. I gave the job everything I had until the day I retired, and up until now, PERA did its best to deliver the pension benefits they promised. But the state was not paying for the benefits they were still promising to their employees. According to PERA, the state and other PERA employers have not made the full actuarially required contribution to PERA since 2002. The shortfall is now over $4.5 billion, plus the investment earnings those contributions would have produced.
It is the moral (and quite possibly legal) responsibility of PERA employers to substantially increase their contributions to PERA until the shortfall has been repaid and to continue to fund true annual cost-of-living increases that will match inflation for PERA retirees. Jim Lipscomb, Arvada