Candidates talk pensions to retired teachers

SOUTHINGTON — Richard Hoffman started his career as an elementary school teacher, first in Bloomfield in 1964, then in New Britain. He took a pay cut from a part-time factory job at General Electric in Plainville.

To augment his salary of about $44,000 in today’s dollars, Hoffman — now a retired school principal living in New Milford — worked a third-shift job “rattling cans” at a Mott’s supermarket on the Berlin Turnpike, sleeping maybe five hours a night in the months when teaching and stocking shelves overlapped.

On Tuesday, the affable Hoffman listened to the two major party candidates for governor, Republican Bob Stefanowski, then Democrat Ned Lamont, at the fall luncheon of the Association or Retired Teachers of Connecticut.

Pension guarantees, naturally, dominated the late-morning gathering at the Aqua Turf. Both candidates told Hoffman and the other 280 or so retirees what they wanted to hear: Their defined-benefit payouts are safe despite a massive shortfall of at least $13 billion in a fund that now holds about $16 billion in assets.

Stefanowski aroused more skepticism going in because of his anti-union rhetoric — not here, but elsewhere — and because of his pledge to eliminate the state income tax and corporate earnings tax without replacing it with other tax increases. That plan would eliminate $11 billion of the state’s $20 billion in annual revenues.

“First of all, I don’t think existing retirees should have any change whatsoever to their pension or their benefits,” Stefanowski declared. “You’ve earned it, you deserve it, you paid into it . ... A lot of people in this room could have worked elsewhere.”

Lamont said he’d honor all commitments in addition to devising ways to attract the best people into the profession. “You don’t tear up contracts and walk away,” he said.

The issue is how the state can make pension payments totaling $1.3 billion this year, rising above $6 billion for a short time in a decade if something isn’t done about it. Contrary to a popular myth, the vast majority of the state’s payments are required to make up for the shortfall rather than to meet current obligations.

Stefanowski said he’d like to see a voluntary shift to 401(k)-style pensions, which would mean pension buyouts. That’s a popular plan, especially among Republicans, and the problem, he acknowledged, is finding the money for those buyouts, which would range well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps over $1 million per pensioner, depending on his or her age.

A switch away from definedbenefit plans could save money over many decades but would not cut state costs in the near term.

Stefanowski also argued that his tax-cutting plan would eventually shore up the pension fund. “The best way to protect it is to get taxes down and to get this economy moving,” he said.

He added, “We’ve got to talk to the union leadership and we’ve got to figure out something that’s fair.”

Lamont, for his part, said he would not seek to reopen pension and health benefits agreements as a way to save money. “No,” he said, “We have a shortage of teachers . ... I want the best and the brightest going into teaching.”

In all, there are about 36,000 retired Connecticut teachers receiving an average of about $50,000 a year — in some cases, more than they earned in the classroom. They don’t receive Social Security for their teaching work.

Lamont also insisted that Stefanowski would cut state funding to towns, jacking up property taxes, and would suspend payments to the pension funds, as independent candidate Oz Griebel said the state should consider.

“That’s the opposite of fiscal stability. They’ll be playing all the games times three that got us into this mess to begin with,” Lamont said to reporters afterward.

Stefanowski hasn’t said he’d do those things, but he also hasn’t said how he’d pay for his massive tax cuts.

“All he’s got to say is ‘This is how I’m going to pay for it,” Lamont said, defending his assumption that Stefanowski would cut school aid and pension payments.

Hoffman, the retired principal, said he’s “very leery” that Stefanowski can maintain full pension payments while slashing taxes by more than half. But he’s mostly worried about future teachers.