A Quick Broad Stroke on the Proposed Pension Settlement

Most of the many things that can be said about the proposed settlement on the unions’ lawsuit challenging the pension reform law, I’ll leave for later.  You can peruse the various related documents, including the legislation that the General Assembly must past without amendment, some summaries, and the actuarial document, here.

The basic analysis is this: As I’ve said too many times to pick a link, the reform wasn’t adequate as it was, and this makes it even less so.

But there’s a more important broad-stroke point to pull from it all.  Russell Moore articulated it succinctly on Twitter, but we can be sure that it’s the feeling of many and will be repeated many times in the halls of the State House.  Explaining why I shouldn’t be so negative about the deal, he wrote:

because it maintains 94 percent of the savings and you no longer have to worry about some judge throwing the whole thing out .

That’s pretty much the attitude to which Rhode Islanders have been beaten, isn’t it?  Shhh… at least we’re getting away with something!  Don’t anger the insiders and special interests.

We need to change the attitude in this state.  Reality is going to force us to do so.  It’s just a matter of how painful it’s going to be.

Reforms have to be implemented and then expanded, not implemented and then we all cross our fingers and hope that a corrupt judiciary doesn’t throw them out because special interests complain, or a corrupt electoral system doesn’t allow the unions to flip enough seats in the General Assembly to undo it all.

This isn’t good enough.  We deserve better.

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