Findings from TUA’s pension project on Saline, Kansas, are featured in this story from KSALLink.com.
An organization that believes government pensions are out of control, and unsustainable, revealed the top 25 salaries and projected pensions from Saline County, the City of Salina, and Salina teachers Wednesday.
Taxpayers United of America is currently traveling the country, making stops in every state. Kansas is their ninth stop so far.
In an effort to bring notice to their cause, the organization is stopping in communities across the country, revealing the salaries of local government employees, and projecting what their lifetime pensions will be.
For regular government employees the lifetime pensions are projected from retirement at age 62, to age 85. For police and fire lifetime pensions are projected from retirement at age 55, to age 85.
Vice President Christina Tobin says that the pensions are estimates, based on each employee working long enough to retire with a full pension. She says they had to estimate, because in Kansas government will release pension numbers, but not names.
Tobin says that government pensions are out of control all over the country, and are unsustainable.
She believes that all government workers need to get what is owed to them. However, the current pension system is broken, and needs to be changed to more of a 401K style program for new government employees.
Tobin thinks that the current pension system is so badly flawed, it is in danger of running out of money. She says that all government employees should contribute ten percent more to the pension system.
Another related issue Taxpayers United of America is tracking is “double dipping”. The organization’s director of outreach Rae Ann McNeilly says “double dipping” is when a government employee retires, and begins to draw their full pension. That employee then gets a job in another branch of government. That employee then gets paid for their new job, and at the same time continues to collect their full pension. She says while “double dipping” is not against the law, it is “not ethical or moral”.
Mcneilly says that there are currently at least 5,000 government employees in Kansas “double dipping”.
While the group released a list of the top 25 from the three different groups in Salina and Saline County, they are also currently compiling a data base of every government employee in Salina and Saline County, their salary, and their estimated lifetime pension. They will make that list public as well, when it is finished.
Taxpayers United of America is a non-profit pro-taxpayer organization based in Chicago. The group is currently on a tour that will stop in all 50 states, and the Dictrict of Columbia, urging state governments to switch to 401K style pension plans.
Findings from TUA’s pension project on Saline, Kansas, are featured in this article from Wichita Business Journal.
Advocacy group Taxpayers United of America has been touring Kansas this week criticizing what it says are excessive city, county and school district pension programs funded by property tax increases.
The Salina Journal reports that according to the organization, some Salina employees are eligible for payouts of between $1 million and $2.8 million after they retire. However, Salina City Manager Jason Gage says the estimates are misleading because they don’t take into account factors like variation in employee pay from year to year, the average tenure of employees and the average life expectancy.
Taxpayers United of America, which is expected to visit Wichita on Thursday, hand delivered a letter to Gov. Sam Brownback earlier this week encouraging pension reform.
Raising cigarette taxes in most instances have backfired on states hoping to get a windfall on the higher taxes. Unintended consequences are the rule, not the exception.
States raising cigarette taxes usually find that consumers alter their purchasing patterns. They start getting their cigarettes from sources with lower or no taxes. These sources may be nearby states with lower tax rates, the Internet, or Native American territories. The result is that the tax-raising state loses its expected revenue. Furthermore, local retailers are harmed, especially in minority neighborhoods.
When Maryland implemented a $1.00 per-pack cigarette excise tax increase in 2008, law enforcement seized four times as many out-of-state cigarette packs as compared to the same time period the prior year.
Texas also found that raising cigarette taxes was no magic potion. When it raised its excise tax on cigarettes $1.00 in 2007, Internet cigarette purchases by Texas residents increased from 2 percent of total national online sales to 17 percent.
Raising regressive taxes such as cigarette taxes harm the local economy, put an added burden on the poor, especially minorities, and drive local shops out of business. Rather than raising taxes, states must realize that the only realistic way to fight budget deficits is to cut spending.
