Public employees aren't as well-off as de Souza thinks
EDITOR:
Bertram de Souza's column of July 18 (about OPERS pensions) is quite interesting. Aside from the unwarranted tone of the column, there are some things from my personal experience that should be mentioned in connection with what he covered.
First, the health care coverage. That, in light of the decline in investment income, is no surprise. I can absorb the $66.60 per month Medicare B premium, which amounts to $799 per year. The rest is the so called Medigap, which covers only a small portion of any medical expenses I have, and I am sure I can shop around if necessary. But that leaves open the question of those whose OPERS pensions are nowhere near being as munificent as Mr. de Souza wants to think they are.
The ridiculous fringe benefit of pay for unused vacation time and sick time? Where I worked, I had to use vacation time up within a year. I could only get about one year's worth on retirement at the very most. I could only get one half of the accrued sick time. Because I managed to stay healthy, I had maxed out. The maximum was 120 days, which meant 60 days pay, and I was an exception. Most of my coworkers had to use theirs up before retirement. One that I knew had the sick time eaten up by the cancer that killed her.
Most of the workers I knew earned wages under $14.50 an hour, which would be the true equivalent of the $1.50 an hour I earned on my first job out of high school, which was an unskilled labor job. Considering their actual earnings, and the number of years they worked, their pensions won't amount to much at all.
The assets figures look impressive, but it is the investment income from those assets that actually pay the pensions and health care costs, and they are taxable when they get to the recipients, as is the portion paid by the employer -- 96 percent of my OPERS income is taxable.
I am quite aware of what is going on in the private sector because of their failures. I can also see where it is leading, even if you can't. Some system of national health insurance will be put in place. And considering the propensities of both parties for micromanagement, it will be expensive.
Of course the money comes out of the taxpayers' pockets. They have indicated they want the services, therefore, they will need to pay for them.
Then there is one immense howler. The statement that "if all the relevant factors pertaining to employment history are met, a public employee can receive 80 percent of the average of the three highest years of salary." To get 80 percent of the average salary for the final three years of employment, they would need to work 36 years. It takes 44 years to achieve 100 percent. It appears that the figure he used is the one for retirement after 30 years of service at the age of 59. That person receives 80 percent of the 66 percent of the average of the final three years of employment. That comes to 52.8 percent of that final three year average, which is a long way from de Souza's totally erroneous figure.
As for the desire for pay raises, those public employees have mortgages. They have children. They need to educate these children, and their incomes are just as taxable. They want to send them to college, and the tuitions at those badly tarnished monuments to Jim Rhodes have become very bloated. Yes, the tuitions have gone up all over, but Ohio is still close to being the worst in the nation.
JEROME K. STEPHENS
Warren