Teachers are paying a sizable share toward retirement benefits: A letter to the editor

February 11, 2015

The following letter to the editor from state Rep. Kevin Pearson (LA-Slidell) appeared on The Times-Picayune website, www.nola.com, on February 10, 2015. Rep. Pearson chairs the House retirement committee in the Louisiana Legislature.

Most people value and respect our teachers, police officers and firefighters to such a degree that they believe these individuals deserve fair compensation for their sacrifices. Additionally, most people are fair-minded and likely agree that any debt owed is one that should be repaid. The citizens of Louisiana deserve to know that the state is working to build and uphold a standard when it comes to fairness and compensation for its employees. This is the Louisiana that all citizens deserve.

Louisiana's teacher retirement plan requires a contribution of 8 percent of salary from employees and a contribution by employers that is determined annually. The employer contribution for K-12 teachers this school year is 5.2 percent for the actual retirement benefit. Next year, it will be 4.3 percent. All other employer payments go toward paying off debt owed to the teacher pension system for years of underfunding. Despite the assertion by columnist James Varney in a recent opinion piece that public employees are unwilling to pay their fair share of their own retirement costs, simple math shows that teachers are paying for more than half the cost of their actual future benefit.

Additionally, unlike in the private sector, Louisiana's public school teachers are prohibited from participating in Social Security. So a modest pension from the state (on average $2,102 per month) is often a retired teacher's only source of income after years of public service.

The Legislature is acutely aware of the costs associated with its retirement systems. For the state employee and teacher retirement systems, the bulk of the employer contribution rate is to liquidate debt accrued over decades of state underfunding. Our public pension systems are not on "cruise control" as Mr. Varney alleges. The state has taken significant measures in recent years to pay out this accrued debt and to control costs going forward. 

These measures include: requiring retirement provisions with a cost to have a funding source that will cover the cost within 10 years; creating a new tier of retirement benefits for new hires that increases the retirement eligibility age and the final average compensation period; requiring 2/3 legislative approval for retirement provisions with a cost; and passing legislation, in cooperation with the retirement systems and School Board representatives, to pay past debt more quickly.

Mr. Varney appears resistant to providing teachers, police and firefighters with a reasonable source of retirement income from their pension plan. On these matters, I do not share his views and pledge to continue working with my colleagues in the Legislature to ensure a reasonable and sustainable benefit structure for public employees well into the future.

State Rep. Kevin Pearson
Chairman, House Committee on Retirement
Slidell