April 19, 2022
VSEA issued the following statement tonight about the Governor’s presser today with David Coates:
The Governor’s confused statements this afternoon concerning the bipartisan pension bill would be comical if the stakes surrounding this issue were not so high for Vermont’s state employees. The Governor’s comments raise more questions than they provide answers.
The Governor says that his Administration wasn’t a “part of the closed room deal that led to this current bill.”
- Does that mean that Pension Task Force member Michael Pieciak, the Commissioner of the Department of Financial Regulation and a member of the Governor’s cabinet is no longer serving in the Administration? Had the Governor lost Commissioner Pieciak’s phone number?
- By “closed room deal” is the Governor referring to the five months of Pension Task Force meetings, open to the public, live-streamed on YouTube, and still publicly accessible on this YouTube channel?The Task Force who met multiple times at Room 267 in the Pavilion building, just three floors beneath the Governor’s Office?
- If the Governor was uncomfortable with the makeup, procedures, or format of the Pension Task Force, why did he sign the bill creating it and establishing its procedures (Act 75, the former H. 449) into law on June 8, 2021?
The Governor says that his reckless threats to both this hard-fought pension compromise and the State budget are born out of concerns about the unfunded liability.
- Is the Governor unaware that changing to less secure, more expensive defined contribution plans for new employees would not address the unfunded liability?
- Has the Administration failed to realize that its proposal would raise the age profile of the retiree pool, making the State employee retiree plan less sustainable, and raising the odds of the sorts of catastrophic threats to the system that the Pension Task Force was created to prevent?
Finally, this last-minute stunt raises the question that many VSEA members have raised over the past several weeks since these veto threats began:
- Does Governor Phil Scott disagree with the statement of gubernatorial candidate Phil Scott, who said “Our pension issues are huge. But I’ve also been raised to believe that a deal is a deal”?
One thing isn’t in question, though: that the long hard work of stakeholders from both parties, —from the members of the Legislature, Administration, and the public— should not be derailed by a cynical, bad-faith, late-breaking ploy to advance the interests of the wealthiest Vermonters.
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Call Governor Scott at (802) 828-3333, or e-mail him using this link! Tell him you want him to support both the pension bill and the State budget. A deal is a deal.
See Also:
- ACTION ALERT! Governor Scott Threatens To Reopen Pension Fight!
- Legislative Update: April 19, 2022
- View More Recent VSEA Pension Posts
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