PERA workers typically contribute 8 percent of their pay to their retirement plan. In 2015, taxpayers will contribute anywhere from 13.7 percent to 21.95 percent of each PERA worker’s salary to the plan, depending on the worker’s employment division. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
Re: “The lies behind those PERA bucks,” July 12 Mike Rosen column.
I sense some envy on Mike Rosen’s part toward the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA).
My wife worked long, hard hours in a metro school system earning PERA benefits. With an advanced degree and experience in budgeting and personnel matters, she might have sought a higher salary in the private sector, but, in exchange for the promise of PERA benefits, accepted less pay for the deferred benefit of a safe retirement package. She’s already endured a reduction of the cost-of-living adjustment she’d been contractually promised under PERA. And her Social Security was reduced to avoid her reaping a “windfall” given her PERA benefit, despite working for 22 years outside of PERA.
It is unconscionable for an employer, whether governmental or private, to contract for a worker’s labor and career only to decide, after receiving that benefit, that the arrangement doesn’t look as good now, with payment due, as it once did.
Robert Knepel, Greeley
This letter was published in the July 19 edition.
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