My wife retired as an employee of the state in 2008 with 30 years of employment under the PERS retirement
system. All those years she contributed 9% of her earnings toward her pension.
All the public media promotions for passing Senate Bill 5 insinuate that state employees do not
contribute to their own pensions and that the taxpayers foot the entire bill. My wife and I were
confused and angered that such a misstatement could be made, so we communicated our feelings to the
governor and several state reps who authored some of the misinformation.
I received a reply from State Rep. Shannon Jones which explained the underlying truth of the matter in a
way which gave us both a sigh of relief and now allows us to vote yes on the issue.
Her reply in part states: "While your wife may have paid her share of her pension (as I do), there
are many public employees who do not pay their share of their pension due to a practice called pension
pick-up. A collective bargaining agreement or a contract with an employer under current law can contain
a provision where the employee’s pension contribution is paid by an employer on an employee’s behalf in
addition to the employing entity’s contribution. For example, a school district in my Senate district
alone spends $450,000 a year in pension pick-ups. Prohibiting this practice would indeed save the local
school district money.
Senate Bill 5 asks all public employees to pay their share of their pension by prohibiting the practice
of pension pick-up whether they are part of a bargaining unit or not. Thus taxpayers will continue to
pay 14% of the employee’s salary toward the defined pension benefit and the employee must pay 10% toward
his own benefit."
We had never heard of the existence of "pension pick-ups" and, I would imagine, neither have
many other voters. The very idea of pension pick-ups is blatantly unfair to the taxpayers and those
state employees who pay their fair share. Why such a practice was ever allowed in the first place is a
mystery to me.
I would imagine that many citizens, especially those who are state employees, were as befuddled by the
ads, fliers and literature on State Issue 2 as we were. If so, I hope this sets the record straight.
Robert Smith
Bowling Green