The Attack on Public Pensions

The Republicans are attacking public pensions nationwide.

We have seen the first slippery step in the cookie cutter 401(k) proposal pushed by David Williams. This was done with no analysis of the cost to the State and little regard for state employees.

The second step freezes the plan for current employee, to “rein in the rights of incumbent employees”.

The third step is cramming down a retiree’s pension from $30,000 a year to $15,000 a year, which requires the state going bankrupt.

Newt Gingrich is pushing the idea of allowing States to go bankrupt so they can default on workers and retirees.

This threat makes it even more important that Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS) cleans up its act - which probably will not even start until the auditor and SEC finish their investigations.

KRS poor governance practices compound the problems.

We have already heard rumors that attorneys representing public workers will be challenging disability appeals on the fact that KRS has illegal term limited trustees making their decisions invalid.

The biggest threat is that Cities strapped for cash and facing large pension bills will not pay them making the underfunding worse. When taken to court the cities will be able to use the fact that two of the KRS Trustees are illegally serving 4th terms.

Also the two representatives representing CERS employees are not city or county employees but lobbyists as pointed out in a previous post.

The betting money is that one of the Northern Kentucky Cities could be the first to default on their pension payments under tea party pressure.

The legislature needs to continue to at least make the minimum payments on the KERS obligation as it promised in HB1 and keep the requirements for cities and counties to be fully funded.

However, the legislature needs to send a clear message to KRS to clean up its act and force KRS toy comply with House Bill 1’s three term limit and boot off the illegal four term trustees immediately.

Random Drug Testing

State Senator Lonnie Napier wants random drug testing of individuals receiving money and benefits from the state. Lonnie wants to test welfare clients.

Jack Brammer of the Herald Leader looks at Napier’s plan.

The cost of even random testing would be in the millions of dollars. So Lonnie here is the hard question again.

How are you going to pay for it? And some nebulous answer about, “it will get people off drugs” just doesn’t cut it. You have some pretty hard numbers on what it is going to cost $30 per test, so how about some hard numbers on how you are going to pay for it.

I’m also a little fuzzy on how you plan on taking care of kids in families where the applicant tests positive. How is this going to impact the foster care system in this state.

I understand that you don’t want kids raised in an environment where the parent is using state benefits to get drugs.

Who does?

But I don’t understand just how cutting all the benefits off helps the kids?

Another question Lonnie hasn't seemed think about, us where would these parents get treatment for drug addiction? Most treatment centers are out the price range of individual getting welfare.

Again, who is going to pay for the foster care and the drug treatment?

So this is one of those bills that sounds good to hard working Kentuckians but is a little short on common sense thinking.

One final thing, if Lonnie thinks that those receiving money and benefits from the state should submit to random drug testing like “most employers require” then his law should be universal.

If Lonnie wants to be fair the law should include state workers, public school teachers and employees, everyone employed by a state college or university, and certainly members of the Kentucky General Assembly.