If the recent election proved anything, it’s that you don’t have to level with voters about the most serious issues of the day to win. No one voting for Sen. Michael Bennet, for example, has any idea how he thinks this nation should solve its deficit and debt crises.
Indeed, Bennet himself may have no idea.
So I won’t insult readers by insisting that the candidates now queuing up to run for Denver mayor need to put forward plans for coping with the likelihood of anemic revenue growth for a long time. They’ll be perfectly electable if they hold forth vaguely about “hard choices” while pledging, say, to nurture small business and turn the city into a green-energy oasis, details to come.
But if candidates do by chance wish to provide evidence that they’re serious about addressing long-term structural issues, they could do worse than offer their opinion of recent recommendations from the Denver Employees Retirement Plan that would apply to future hires.
To be fair, Denver’s retirement plan — which does not include police and firefighters — is not one of those you’ve read about that are hopelessly under water financially and will require a massive bailout someday. In fact, it’s responsibly managed and, at 88.4 percent funded at the end of last year, is in far better shape than many of its counterparts elsewhere.
The board has even refused to provide a cost-of-living increase for a number of years in order to limit long-term liability.
But like most public pension systems, Denver’s is burdened by a few provisions that are hard to justify so long as taxpayers have to make good on them. That’s why the Hickenlooper administration asked the pension board to come up with ideas for reform. If the public must kick in more revenue — and the City Council is poised to boost the city’s contribution beginning next year by 1 percent of payroll, or nearly $5 million — then it only makes sense for the pension board to look at the cost side, too.
In response, the board offered up a few ideas that should have been no-brainers. Instead, they provoked one Teamsters official to warn, in full man-the-barricades mode, that the city “isn’t going to be able to get anyone else to come to work here.”
Let’s see. Among other things, the board suggests calculating benefits based on the average monthly salary over five years instead of three — hardly the sort of adjustment to turn off new hires. No, what really ticks off opponents are proposals to boost the minimum retirement age from 55 to 60 and to offer a full pension at the minimum age only after 25 years of work (as opposed to 20 today).
Remember, these ideas would apply solely to new hires who would begin retiring in the late 2030s, by which time private-sector workers could be waiting until age 68 or older to access a full pension.
How can anyone in this era of octogenarians denounce as inhumane a 25-year career that ends at 60?
Although a near-term boost in both the city’s and employees’ contribution is a foregone conclusion — a “done deal,” council president Chris Nevitt assured me last week — the council has kicked the structural changes over to another committee for further review. Nevitt said some council members felt blind-sided by the plan and probably won’t look at it further until early in the next administration.
So be it. In the meantime, however, it will be instructive to see whether anyone running for mayor bothers to put in a good word for such a modest proposal.
Not that I’m holding out much hope, of course, given the low bar for political success set earlier this month.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
