The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

Democrats and Pension Perks

By Mike Nichols

People used to collect stamps in their spare time. Or coins. Grow tomatoes, maybe. I have three kids so my hobbies are cleaning up stuff, overcooking hamburgers, yelling a lot, coaching soccer, helping with spelling homework and trying hard to avoid the math.

Oh, I also spend a lot of time being a chump because – although I figure I put in at least three hours and ten minutes per day doing these things – I don’t get paid and I don’t receive a pension. That is why I think I’ll apply immediately for a job as a janitor or cafeteria worker or teachers’ aide in one of Wisconsin’s public schools.

These jobs are sweet gigs because right now such folks only have to work 600 hours a year (an average of three hours and ten minutes per day for 190 days) to qualify for a taxpayer-financed pension. Not, apparently however, sweet enough.

School support personnel are actually feeling “hurt” and “offended” and “discriminated against,” in the words of Joint Finance Committee member Gary Sherman (D-Port Wingnut), because teachers have an even better deal. Teachers only have to work about two hours and twenty minutes per day during the school year (440 hours per year) to qualify for a pension. In an 11-4 vote that broke down along party lines, Joint Finance Committee Democrats have now recommended giving the aides and the janitors the same deal.

This is apparently a matter of high principal for Democrats, who passed the issue along to the full legislature even though they have no idea what it will cost. And despite big losses in the state pension fund of late, no inclination to find out. Finding out, the problem is, could be inconvenient. Look at all the inconvenience Tom Ament had to suffer, after all. And anyway, this is not about money. It’s about people who have “given their lives to the schools,” according to former teacher and current politician John Lehman (D-WEAC).

Or at least that portion of their lives that takes up a few hours a day during the school year, I guess.

Some people always have to be spoilsports, of course, like Robin Vos, the Republican from Racine.

In the real world, Vos noted, people are losing their jobs and benefits and pensions. “But let me tell you,” he added, “if you are a part-time worker in a school district we are going to make sure not only do you have great health insurance that you probably pay almost nothing for, we are going to make sure you have a retirement system that is entirely funded by the taxpayers and on top of (that) you don’t even have to bargain for it. We are just going to give it to you as a big gift because the Democrats are in control and who was helpful (in getting them elected) last year? I forget.”

He might have been reminded when, after the vote, WEAC happily touted the result.

What Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) can’t forget, in the meantime, is the taxpayer whose door she knocked on not long ago in Brown Deer.

“People are going, ‘I cannot believe how out of control this state is with its spending. I can’t believe how you guys can have all these benefits and pensions and health care. Who is thinking about me?’ He went almost ballistic,” said Darling. “And I think that guy at that door, and that was in Brown Deer, I think he was right…I don’t hear any talk or focus on who the heck is paying for all this.”

“How is this fair to the person who has two jobs?” she asked. Or to the “family worried about where the next meal is going to come from? Now, they are going to have to be paying for retirement benefits for individuals who work (440) hours a year.”

Not much more than a couple hours a day. With summers off to recover.

It’s incredible, said Darling. It is. It’s, as they say, a gift. I want a gift.

Someone else can worry about the math.

-April 27, 2009

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