An excellent editorial in today’s Providence Journal references a disturbing item that I missed this week:

Preposterously, [General Treasurer candidate Frank Caprio] wants to take the investment fees the state pays ($70 million last year) and plow the money into resuming unsustainable so-called cost-of-living raises for retired public employees.

Preposterous, indeed. Exasperation at the continued lack of insight on this matter by candidates and state officials causes me to be brusque here.

Listen up, Frank Caprio and everyone who laments the elimination of COLA’s from public pensions and especially those working to even partially restore them.

#1: For decades, many, if not most, public employees in Rhode Island were permitted to retire AND IMMEDIATELY START COLLECTING A PENSION after only twenty years of working. This has led, over the course of decades, to the grotesque spectacle of able-bodied people in their forties and early fifties retired and already collecting public pensions. Add in, of course, pension spiking: cram in all the overtime you can in your last three years of working so as to jack up the pension you’ll collect.

Let us not leave out the fiscal impact of these dubious arrangements. (Fiscal stuff: isn’t that supposed to be Frank Caprio’s strong suit, as a former General Treasurer?) This week, we learned that Rhode Island has the fourth highest property taxes in the country. And Rhode Island’s combined state and local tax burden is the sixth highest. All of these taxes are a very significant – possibly exclusive? – funding source of the generous salaries and benefits, including very generous pensions, paid to public employees on the state and local level. Yet, even if the 2011 “landmark” (really, I wasn’t chortling) pension reform is not knocked back in the ongoing, almost certainly unconstitutional, mediation, none of those tax rankings are projected to go down. That means that EVEN IF the “landmark” pension reform stands, Rhode Island taxpayers will continue to bear a tax burden that hovers near the top nationally. (Good ProJo article about the impact on cities and towns if the state’s already inadequate “landmark” public pension reform is dialed back.)

#2: Contrast the public sector’s retirement situation with that of the Dreaded Private Sector (D.P.S.). Many, many people in the private sector have either inadequate or no retirement fund arrangements and retirement at age 65, much less age 45, is simply not on the horizon. And to most of those who do have a reasonable retirement fund going, the idea of a COLA is absurdly incomprehensible.

You can see, accordingly, how those of us in the D.P.S. view the hand-wringing and lamentation over the loss of the public pension COLA as someone with a delicious, five course gourmet meal in front of them who is complaining that they won’t get dessert.

And to those candidates and officials who wish to or are actually working to even partially restore those COLA’s, we say: your perspective and your priorities badly need adjusting. It is clear from the numbers and the facts on the ground that it is not the person with the gourmet meal in front of them who truly needs your time, attention or compassion.

[Monique is editor of the RI Taxpayer Times newsletter and spokesperson for R.I. Taxpayers. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the organization.]