Greedy Pigs of Legislature Stealing Real Workers' Pensions

This is blatant, daylight theft.  State employees with 30 years of full-time service are lucky to get barely $2,000 per month in retirement, and they won't get even that if the repugs get their way and eliminate the broken state pension system.

Meanwhile, part-time legislators - 60 days per year, or 1/5 of a full-time job - are pulling down retirement checks five times the size of a real worker's retirement check.

 

And when I say "real workers" and "state employees," I mean the cops and firefighters who put their lives on the line. I mean the social workers who protect children from abuse.  I mean the engineers  who get roads paved and the park rangers who keep the trails clear and the park housekeepers and cooks who keep the lodge always ready. I mean the tax auditors who keep people honest and the corrections officers who guard the ones who aren't.  I mean all the people who make Kentucky livable.

From the Herald:

As the General Assembly resumes its debate over pensions — who should get one, who shouldn’t and how should Kentucky pay for what’s owed — public records show that some of state government’s larger pensions belong to current and former legislators, who serve part-time at the Capitol.

There are 186 retired legislators drawing pensions from their own separately managed retirement system, with an average annual payout of $23,934. (They also get free health insurance for themselves and their dependents.) By comparison, the average payout from the largest pension fund for retired state government workers is $21,587. For retired local government workers, it’s $11,739.

But those are just rank-and-file averages. Thanks to a pension-sweetening law the General Assembly passed for itself in 2005, nearly two dozen past and present legislators collect or expect to get lifetime pensions above $50,000 a year — roughly twice the state’s per capita income. And that’s on top of whatever retirement plans they’ve made elsewhere in their full-time jobs.

Members of the $50,000 club include Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, who is in line to collect $56,448 a year when he retires, and former House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, who is drawing $77,196 a year as he runs for attorney general.

And unlike Kentucky’s primary state workers’ pension system, which is only 13 percent funded, the publicly subsidized legislators’ pension system is 98 percent funded.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article225417540.html#storylink=cpy

SNIP

 

Thanks to a pension-sweetening law the General Assembly passed for itself in 2005, nearly two dozen past and present legislators collect or expect to get lifetime pensions above $50,000 a year — roughly twice the state’s per capita income. And that’s on top of whatever retirement plans they’ve made elsewhere in their full-time jobs.

 

Members of the $50,000 club include Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, who is in line to collect $56,448 a year when he retires, and former House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, who is drawing $77,196 a year as he runs for attorney general.

It gets worse.  Way worse.  It ends with a list of legislators drawing more than $50,000 a year from Kentucky's taxpayers, most of whom earn far less for far more and harder work.