For years, our employees have been asked to do more with less. However, the difficult reality is that healthcare costs and pension costs have risen dramatically and that has created a benefit system that is simply unsustainable. Government benefits have
grown while so many others in the private sector have seen their benefits adjusted in order to protect jobs. Currently, most state employees pay next to nothing from their salaries toward their pension, while the state's taxpayers pay more than $190
million each year on state employees' behalf. Similarly, most state workers only pay about 6% of their premium costs for their health care plan. Asking public employees to make a pension payment of just over 5% (which is about the national average) and a
premium payment of 12% (which is about half of the national average) would save the state more than $30 million over three months. Most workers outside of government would love a deal like that--particularly if it means saving jobs.
