On Thursday, April 3, hours after the S&P 500 plummeted 5 percent, the Washington state House Appropriations Committee voted to raise the expected investment returns of public employee pension assets.
The budget gimmick was not motivated by economic optimism, but rather to enable House Democrats to move $1.7 billion in state investments away from supporting school employees and other public employee retirement accounts to spend on other state programs.
This action will erase $5.9 billion in future assets for some of Washington’s oldest retired individuals. In the same meeting, the committee also advanced a bill that transfer another $3.3 billion of pension assets into the general fund.
As global markets plunge, the House Appropriations Committee is wiping a total $9.2 billion of pension assets off the books.
This is not right.
This is raiding money from accounts meant for Washington retirees. In the future, this will dramatically raise the cost to taxpayers. It is not common sense to do this.
There is a proposal on the table that actually saves money for the taxpayer by merging pension funds so the overfunded pensions assist the underfunded pensions in the next decades, saving billions in the long-term. There are no new taxes involved.
As the final state budget is negotiated in the remaining days of April, I encourage our District 20 legislators to work for the right and moral thing to do for our many widows and other oldsters who desperately need their security assured.
Our district legislators need to hear from you directly. What the House Democrat Appropriations Committee has voted through is wrong.
Carolyn Stella
Chehalis
