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Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, is the chief legislative backer of a bill that would treat Oregon State Hospital employees like police officers for pension purposes, thus allowing them to retire early with enhanced payments.
(File photo)
The unfunded obligations of Oregon's public pension system have exploded once again, reaching about $20 billion as of late last year. In response, you'd think lawmakers would, at the very least, guard the system zealously against new burdens. After all, as the pension system's shortfall grows, so will mandatory contributions from government agencies, reducing the number of cops, teachers and other employees they can hire.
Yet on Monday, a House panel conducted a public hearing on House Bill 4011, which would boost the pension benefits of Oregon State Hospital employees. Kicking off testimony was Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, the proposal's chief legislative backer, who believes employees of the state psychiatric hospital should qualify as police officers for pension purposes. This would allow them to retire about five years earlier than they would otherwise and receive elevated pension payments.
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You'd think Clem, as a supposed guardian of the public purse, would know before testifying how many people would qualify for early retirement under his proposal. But when asked, he had absolutely no idea, relying upon a fellow supporter to provide a number - 2,300. Details, details.
Clem was followed by a string of hospital employees. There was Brant Johnson, a collaborative problem solving coach and vice president of the hospital's SEIU sublocal. He described some of the perils and stresses of his job - occasional attacks by patients, for instance, and the need for constant vigilance. There was Aubryn Ouska, who works in admissions and described being choked by a patient. Eva Rippeteau, a political coordinator for Oregon AFSCME Council 75, explained that allowing the nurses and psychiatrists her union represents to retire early would give them a much-deserved and needed benefit.
The testimony of hospital employees certainly suggested that their jobs can be stressful and, at times, dangerous. But changing pension law - and further increasing the cost of Oregon's highest-profile taxpayer burden - should require much more than a series of compelling anecdotes from sympathetic people who hold difficult jobs. It should require petitioners to make a rigorous case that the correct policy response to the pressures of their workplace is early retirement on the taxpayer's dime. It certainly would do nothing to improve worker safety.
Such a case would, among other things, differentiate more meaningfully among the large number of employees who'd receive enhanced pension benefits. The bill would extend eligibility in three waves over a handful of years. The first wave would include employees who are at greatest risk of injury, and the last wave would include those with the lowest level of patient contact. Even if you accepted the argument that some employees deserve to be treated like police officers for pension purposes, it doesn't follow that all - or even many - do. While some of the anecdotes offered by hospital employees Monday were compelling, some were not, including the alleged stress of buying coffee at a hospital shop staffed by patients. This might not be everyone's idea of fun, but it's hardly on par with, say, arresting a violent person in an uncontrolled environment.
Notwithstanding Monday's hearing, HB4011 may well fizzle this session, but it will be back eventually. Whatever the future holds, taxpayers have every reason to be stunned by the effrontery of employee groups who request a sweeping readjustment of pension benefits in the midst of a pension-funding crisis - and try to make their case to a legislative panel with a handful of anecdotes during an abbreviated legislative session. That takes some nerve, right?
Of course it does. But don't blame them. Blame past Legislatures, which, as both Clem and Johnson pointed out, have gradually extended a pension perk created for police officers and firefighters to a long list of other job classifications. Those considered police officers for pension purposes now include, among others, regulatory specialists with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, parole and probation officers, livestock police officers employed by the state Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice investigators, state lottery enforcement agents, some employees at youth correction facilities, and Department of Human Services employees who care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in residential facilities. It is certainly not unreasonable for at least some Oregon State Hospital employees to look at that list and ask, "why not me?"
Lawmakers, however, have no obligation to accommodate such requests, especially given the sorry state of the state's public pension system. The casual expansion of early-retirement status needs to end at some point, and now is as good a time as any. Early retirement should be awarded in the future very selectively, even grudgingly, and only after those seeking special consideration make a strong case that relies on evidence rather than anecdote.
In the meantime, those who'd like to be considered police officers for pension purposes should consider becoming police officers.