Louisiana Voice

State employees hoping to avoid Gov. Bobby Jindal’s state retirement reform, aka reverse gang rape, would be wise to contact the Louisiana State Employee Retirement System (LASERS) Member Services Office as quickly as possible.

Jindal, working in lock step with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is attempting to ram through the ALEC-sponsored retirement reform that could potentially leave many state employees in dire financial straits.

ALEC is a national organization underwritten by dozens of major U.S. corporations, including Koch Industries, which drafts legislation favoring business and industry and passes the proposed legislation along to state lawmakers to take back to their respective legislatures and state assemblies for passage.

One 38-year-old state employee earning $100,000 per year has worked for the state for 15 years and planned on working 15 more years before retiring at approximately $75,000 per year.

Under Jindal’s plan, that employee would only qualify for an annual pension of $17,000 after 30 years, a loss of $58,000 per year, or 77 percent.

Another state employee, 41 years of age with 20 years is presently making $52,000 per year. That employee planned on working another 10 years and retiring at 75 percent of that salary, or $39,000.

That worker is now facing an annual pension of $6,000 after 30 years under Jindal’s plan, a loss of $33,000 per year, or almost 85 percent.

Jindal is seeking an additional 3 percent contribution from state employees but the money would not be used to close the gap on LASER’S unfunded accrued liability (UAL). Nor would it go to increased retirement benefits. Instead, the 3 percent will go directly into the state general fund to help fill holes in Jindal’s budget.

Jindal’s plan also would require state employees to work until age 67 to qualify for full benefits.

Finally, he is seeking to convert from a defined benefits retirement plan to one of defined contributions.

Any one of the three that is subsequently approved by the legislature and signed into law is all but certain to face litigation on the theory—by LASERS officials and courts in Arizona and New Hampshire—that the U.S. Constitution forbids lawmakers from diminishing or impairing a contract.

LASERS contends, and the courts in those two states have agreed, that promises made to employees upon their hire constitute binding contracts and cannot be broken arbitrarily.

State employee morale is at an all-time low, largely due to the policies implemented by Jindal’s minions.

Over at the Department of Health and Hospitals, Carol Steckel, former Commissioner of the Alabama Medicaid Agency, was hired by Jindal to head up health care reform efforts in Louisiana. Her efforts to fire 69 information technology workers and contract their jobs out to the University of New Orleans was thwarted by the Civil Service Commission because commission members did not buy into the rosy numbers she gave them.

Only last week, UNO President Peter Fos said in a letter to DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein that he was disinclined to sign the proposed contract until his concerns “are addressed and resolved to my satisfaction.”

Fos, who is new to the job, obviously does not know how things work in the Jindal administration. Underlings do not question the master; it’s surprising that he has not been Teagued already.

Steckel, who while in Alabama, left out of her budget appropriations for the purchase of artificial limbs for low-income Alabama amputees, saying the funds were optional, not mandatory. She has lost no time in pursuing reprisals against her employees who had the temerity to resist being fired.

The first thing she did was to discontinue flex time, whereby employees had the option of working four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days.

On the heels of that move, she began refusing to grant annual leave to employees.

It is the option of supervisors to grant or refuse annual leave even though it is earned by employees. Generally, the reason for not granting annual leave is that it is essential that the employee be at work on that day.

These, however, are employees she has been trying to fire—the same employees who were blocked out of their computers minutes after being informed in December that they would not have jobs in January and now she says they are needed at their desks. One of the IT workers at DHH has had enough and announced plans to retire.

In other agencies and other offices, state employees who are retirement-eligible are calling LASERS to schedule appointments with LASERS Member Services to plan their exodus from state government.

State Civil Service employees are eligible for retirement after 30 years of service at any age, after 25 years of service at age 55, and after 10 years of service at age 60.

LASERS data show that there are 3,000 rank-and-file employees under the age of 55 but with 25 or more years of service and another 1,100 who are 55 or older with 25 years or more of service.

Moreover, of the 47,000 rank-and-file Civil Service workers, about 9,900, or 21 percent, are eligible for immediate retirement—and they aren’t waiting around for the proverbial shoe to fall.

While it normally requires only a three- to five-week waiting time for an appointment with Member Services, the wait is now about three months—or until late June at the earliest. And as the retirement nightmare approaches reality with the advancement of Jindal’s bills, that line is inevitably going to grow longer and more crowded.

And lest one believes passage of the retirement bills out of the House and Senate retirement committees is not likely, let’s harken back to Rule One:

Follow the money.

Just as in the case of the House and Senate education committees, Jindal has complete control and he is going to go full throttle with his bills through those committees. And the fuel, once again, is money.

Between Jindal and ALEC, a grand total of $182,450 has been invested in 13 members of the two committees.

It turns out Jindal was not running around all over the country raising unnecessary money for a re-election campaign that he already had in the bag; he was fundraising to grease the skids in the Legislature with his own campaign donations.

Illegal? No. Unethical? Probably not. At odds with his squeaky clean public image he so cherishes and burnishes outside the borders of Louisiana? Absolutely.

With that said, let’s take a look at those contributions to select committee members with names of the legislators listed first, followed by the total campaign contributions and the source—Jindal or ALEC corporate members, or both.

House Retirement Committee members:

• Kevin Pearson, Chairman (R-Slidell)—$2500 from Jindal;

• Nick Lorusso, Vice Chairman (R-New Orleans)—$6500 from ALEC corporate members;

• Frank Hoffman (R-West Monroe)—$2500 from Jindal, $12,800 from ALEC corporations;

• Anthony Ligi (R-Metairie)—$5000 from Jindal, $20,700 from ALEC corporate members;

• Jack Montoucet (D-Crowley)—$6000 from ALEC corporate members;

• Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport)—$2500 from Jindal, $11,750 from ALEC corporate members;

• Kirk Talbot (R-River Ridge)—$5000 from Jindal.

The total for the seven House Education Committee members: $17,500 from Jindal, $57,750 from ALEC corporate members.

Senate Retirement Committee members:

• Elbert Guillory, Chairman (D-Opelousas)—$7500 from Jindal, $45,200 from ALEC corporate members;

• Page Cortez, Vice-Chairman (R-Lafayette)—$2500 from Jindal;

• Conrad Appel (R-Metairie)—$2500 from Jindal;

• A.G. Crowe (R-Pearl River)—$2500 from Jindal, $4500 from ALEC corporate members;

• Gerald Long (R-Natchitoches)—$2500 from Jindal, $35,000 from ALEC corporate members;

• Jonathan Perry (R-Kaplan)—$5000 from Jindal.

The total for the Senate Education Committee members: $22,500 from Jindal, $84,700 from corporate members of ALEC.

Larusso, Hoffmann, Ligi, Montoucet, Seabaugh, Talbot, Crowe and Long are all members of ALEC and the organization paid for travel, registration fees, hotel accommodations and meals for members Hoffman, Seabaugh, Crowe and Long to attend ALEC conferences.

Rule Two: See Rule One.

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