State retirees need to get involved in pension changes

The Association of Montana Retired Public Employees is standing up to protect the legal rights and pension benefits of thousands of state and local government retirees

The association is not a group of highly paid members with a big support staff. Just the opposite. The organization’s leaders are volunteers donating their time because they care about retirement issues affecting all Montana public employees. They care about government not reneging on its promise to those workers. And they have been very busy.

The 2013 Legislature passed House Bill 454. The bill started out with good intentions to address concerns about the Public Employees Retirement System, but ended up with serious legal and constitutional deficiencies that broke promises and commitments to retirees. The bill tries to slash or eliminate the “guaranteed annual benefit adjustment” for thousands of retirees who rely on that increase to meet their daily living expenses. The Legislature’s own staff and expert testimony cautioned the approach was unconstitutional and would be successfully challenged in the courts as has happened in other states, but the flawed bill passed anyway.

The retiree association stepped up and successfully obtained a temporary injunction in Helena District Court that blocked a provision in the bill that rolled back the existing guaranteed annual cost-of-living adjustment. The court order allowed the yearly benefit increase to take place at the end of January as scheduled, and will remain in effect while the court decides the association’s underlying case challenging the legality of the Legislature’s actions.

What does this mean to Montana retirees? Go to the association website at http://www.amrpe.org. There retirees will find a calculator that estimates the impacts on their retirement benefit if the benefit reduction had taken affect as planned Jan.1

The journey has just begun.

The District Court will be ruling on the merits of the case in the coming months. There is a lot at stake. Fundamental questions will be answered about the government’s constitutional duty to comply with its own contracts and making good on its promises.

I urge all PERS retirees and those employees approaching retirement to unite and get involved in this effort by supporting the association. Up to this point the cost of the litigation has been borne by a very small percentage of the current 20,000 PERS retirees. In order to continue this endeavor they need your help. If you were or are a state, county or city employee or retiree, you should care about your retirement benefits and you should be involved.

Litigation updates and information can be found at the association’s website http://www.amrpe.org.

(Patty Mott of Clancy is a member of the Association of Montana Retired Public Employees.)