MORE FACTS ABOUT SHARING THE PAIN

[luckyleftyme2]

Top-level employees pay smaller retirement share

Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting
By John Christie and Naomi Schalit, Senior reporters
Published:
Thursday, March 3, 2011 2:07 PM EST
AUGUSTA — As state employees and teachers head into a second day of fighting the governor’s proposal to take almost 10 percent more out of their paychecks to cover Maine’s pension commitment and pension debt, about 1,200 state employees known as “confidentials” experience no such worry.

Those employees — mostly in higher pay grades — will put only 3.65 percent of their pay into the retirement system if Gov. Paul LePage’s pension legislation is approved.

This would continue the long-standing gap between regular state employees and the confidentials that dates to 1981.

Confidential employees are defined as state workers not eligible for collective bargaining because they either serve in high-level, policy-making jobs or are participate in union contract negotiations.

Examples of positions classified as confidential range from assistant director of nursing to budget analyst to civil engineer.

State employees and teachers testified Wednesday against LePage’s pension reform bill during a hearing of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee. More are expected to show up today for the second day of the committee’s hearings.

State employees who fall outside the confidential classification now pay 7.65 percent of their pay into the pension fund. State government adds another 5.5 percent.

Under LePage’s proposal, employees’ contributions would increase to 9.65 percent, while the state’s would not change. The additional millions raised by the increase in employee contributions would help pay down Maine’s $4.4 billion pension debt.

Confidential employees currently pay 1.65 percent of their salaries into the pension system. The state then adds the 5.5 percent it contributes for regular employees, plus another 6 percent, so that the total contribution to the system for the confidentials is the same as the total for other employees: 13.15 percent.

Last year, the state paid about $3 million more than it would have paid if confidentials contributed the same percentage as other employees, according to calculations provided by the state finance department to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

The contribution difference means confidential employees take home a larger percentage of their paychecks.

A teacher, for example, who earns $35,000, now pays $2,677 per year into the pension system. That will go up to $3,377 if the governor’s proposal passes as written.

A confidential employee, such as a staff attorney, who earns $75,000 per year now has to pay $1,237 per year for his or her pension. That would increase to $2,737.

State documents also show that the number of confidential employees has steadily increased during the past decade.

At the end of Gov. Angus King’s administration in 2002, there were 1,149 confidential employees. By the end of Gov. John Baldacci’s eight years in office, the number had grown to 1,258, a 9.5 percent increase.

Sawin Millett, the state’s finance commissioner and a veteran legislator and finance official in the McKernan administration, said the LePage administration has no plan to require confidential employees to pay the same as other employees toward their pension and the pension debt.

He explained that in the early 1980s, confidential employees were offered a 10.5 percent pay increase over two years or to have the state contribute a higher amount to their pensions. They chose the latter.

“Realizing the history,” Millett said, “they obviously forgo, or forewent, raises at that time which they still haven’t gotten. The fairness approach, I think, would be to say everybody gets a 2 percent bump on their share.”

Chris Quint, executive director of the Maine State Employees Association, said his members feel otherwise.

“They definitely think it’s a fairness issue,” he said. “All this talk of a shared sacrifice, then it should be shared sacrifice for all around.”

One of Quint’s union members, Jim Betts of Winthrop, a claims adjudicator at the Maine Bureau of Unemployment Compensation, said, “I’m paying as a taxpayer for this unfunded liability, just like every other citizen in the state of Maine; then, on top of it, they’re taxing me again as a state employee, by freezing my wages, increasing my health care costs and now, raising by 2 percent (my pension contribution), to pay back the loan of the McKernan years.”

the gov. NEEDS TO EXPLAIN THIS UNFAIRNESS! ITS TRUTH TIME!

[Blue Meany]

1. These are simply pay-cuts by another name...he should call them

what they are.