State legislators, county leaders and education advocates in Maryland are once again on a collision course over how to pay for the growing cost of teacher pensions during a prolonged period of slumping revenues.
The infusion of federal stimulus money enabled Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to maintain the current structure of the retirement plan through fiscal 2010, but there are questions over who will foot the bill in the long term.
It's an issue that other states grappling with budget deficits also are confronting, even as local officials maintain that changing the current system simply would shift the burden to local governments and force them to increase property taxes.
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3 comments:
This really chaps my sassafrass. During my lifetime everyone has known the best retirement benefits come from the Federal government or a State government. It has always been that way. Private companies could never compete.
So here we are, the boomers who took advantage of the advertised pension plans of these governments are ready to finally enjoy them. Now we find they were never funded. They were operated as ponzi schemes. Where is the money which should have been paid into these pensions for all of these years?
This is criminal
It's not that the pensions were never funded. MD has a habit of putting money into a fund then taking it back out for something else. Mike Miller recently stated in a speech that, if he is re-elected, he will raise the gas tax in order to prop up the Transportation Trust fund which provides money to maintain roads. The only reason it is out of money is because Miller and others have taken the money out for use elsewhere. Why bother paying more gas tax because that money will be taken back out of the Transportation Trust for other things anyway.
The really BIG DEAL Marylanders need to watch is that Miller and Busch are already forming a committee to figure out how to put the burden of paying teacher pensions on the shoulders of the Counties from which they retire. The State no longer wants or is able to pay the pensions. What is the largest revenue source for Counties and municipalities? PROPERTY TAX.
taking the money out of the trust fund to use it for something else is called a CRIME.
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