Beshear touting pension plan

By RONNIE ELLIS

BOWLING GREEN — Gov. Steve Beshear got a warm reception from local officials and city employees here Monday as he touted the pension reform legislation passed in special session last week.

Bowling Green Mayor Elaine Walker, who introduced Beshear to about 75 city employees, said the bill will save the city budget about $400,000 next year and the county government about $200,000.

“Through his leadership, we’re going to be able to realize benefits immediately,” Walker said. “The governor’s enormous leadership has helped.”

The purpose of the visit and later stops scheduled Monday for Hopkinsville, Paducah and Owensboro and Tuesday in Covington, Ashland and Lexington is to boost his image as an effective governor who can get things done. After a regular session earlier this year when his proposals for casino gambling, an increase in the cigarette tax and pension reform went nowhere, both Beshear’s and lawmakers’ standing with the public plunged.

Beshear put together a compromise bill on pensions, combining features previously agreed on by both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate and told legislative leaders he’d call them into session if they could agree on that or another bill in advance. Lawmakers made a few changes to Beshear’s plan – including mandating payment of incrementally larger percentages of the annually required payments to the systems – and then passed it last week. The bill calls for a working group to study other issues in the pension puzzle and make recommendations to the 2009 General Assembly.

Sherry Legrand, 52, a state Medicaid worker for 27 years, asked the governor about the bill’s provisions for those who wish to retire with full benefits but return to work. The bill allows that after a break of three months (one for hazardous duty employees), but the returning employee cannot qualify for a second pension as they previously could.

Legrand said that doesn’t bother her but she can’t afford not to retire this year because of an opportunity to have her benefits calculated on the highest three years of salary rather than on the average of the highest five. But she has a son at Western Kentucky University and isn’t ready to stop working.

“I’m not finished, so hopefully I can work something out to come back to work after three months,” Legrand said.

She gave Beshear credit for bringing lawmakers together on the pension bill, but she wasn’t happy with the way the regular session ended with major issues unresolved.

“I was very disappointed in the first (regular) session,” Legrand said. “But hopefully this bipartisanship will get some things going in the right direction.”

Beshear promised to work to foster a continuation of bipartisan cooperation.

“I’m happy to report that during this special session, you actually saw Republicans and Democrats leaving politics at the front door and coming together to address quite honestly one of the most complex and most financially troubling issues that we have to deal with in state government,” Beshear said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that same bipartisan attitude that allowed us to do pension reform is also focused on improving the education of our kids, that it’s also focused on providing health care for our people and that it’s focused on creating new jobs.”

Beshear said the bill puts the pension systems on sound financial footing, if the annual payments are honored. But the key will be the annual payments, by a legislature that couldn’t find enough money this spring to avoid cutting existing services in education and health and human services.

“The legislature and the governor are going to have to make those yearly payments a priority,” Beshear said when asked how tough it will be to find the money.

Beshear said he will soon announce that two Japanese companies will locate facilities in Kentucky and he touted the state’s potential to be a leader in providing alternative fuels. Part of that, he said, will be the use of coal, but he said Kentucky must lead the way in making coal “cleaner and greener.”

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com.