By Jim Davis
The legislative special session that began Oct. 9 will likely see the House and Senate butt heads again on the issue that caused anger and division in the spring regular session: state funding for students attending private schools. But there is one potential issue that could bring the two legislative bodies together: improving retirement benefits for state retirees.
One key fact that surprises many people is that state retiree benefits have not increased since 2001. That has many retirees in a bind as they try to meet rising costs while an important part of their income never increases.
There are more than 122,000 state employees and retirees in Texas representing all state agencies and living in communities across the state, many in West Texas. A group of retirees is working through the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU) hoping to convince the Legislature to pass and Gov. Greg Abbott to sign legislation in the special session. The only hope for that is to convince Abbott to add the pension issue to the session’s agenda.
This is not a cheap proposal. Estimates are that a 10 percent cost-of-living adjustment would cost about $4.2 billion and a one-time “13th monthly check” about $250 million. But remember that the Legislature started off this year with a huge surplus. Another point is that, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, three-fourths of state and local pension plans nationwide have built-in automatic cost-of-living provisions. It is also interesting that the state lawmakers increased their own retirement benefits in 2005 and 2013 while ignoring state retirees.
The TSEU group is lobbying legislators to pass relief legislation and hopefully convince the governor to add this to the agenda and then sign the passed legislation.
So far. the governor has focused mainly on giving funds to parents who want to send their children to private schools. That is projected to pass the Senate during the special session, particularly with the strong support of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate. The House, however, blocked the proposal during the spring regular session and might again now. Abbott’s issue is particularly opposed by rural legislators who don’t have any private schools in their districts. The fear is that funding private school students will hurt funding for public schools, which is based on the number of students attending classes.
Asked for comment on the retiree issue, the staff of Rep. Brooks Landgraf of Odessa said only that they know about it but also know it’s not on the special session’s agenda. The offices of Rep. Tom Craddick of Midland and Sen. Kevin Sparks of Midland did not reply to requests for comments by the American’s deadline.
Jim Davis spent 30 years as a journalist, mostly as Bureau Chief of an Austin Capitol bureau for a newspaper chain, and two years with UPI covering events in Mexico and Central America. In 1992 he joined the Texas Dept. of Insurance as Public Information Officer and retired in 2002. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jan.
