Pension overhaul has harmful affects on many
By Matt Blanchette
@mattblanchette
As a result of the pension overhaul legislation from 2011 and a new settlement agreement thousands of RI retirees will lose out on cost of living adjustments.
As a group intends to show the court, the result can be devastating.
Larry Hall of Scituate was a teacher in Chariho for 28 years. He retired in 2004 two years after his wife passed away, leaving him to raise the couple’s three year old daughter alone.
Frozen and now proposed reduced COLAS are deeply affecting Hall as he raises his little girl.
“Now with that gone all of a sudden it’s like, I have college to pay for. I have hopefully a wedding someday and all these things. That’s a lot of angst,” Hall said. “That is a pit in my stomach that I never had before.“
Hall is not alone. All of the 27,000 retirees have a story, a way they will be affected by losing out on money they had been counting on while serving the state for any number of years.
“My pension has shrunk. I have $100 dollars a month in social security. I have no widow’s benefit. It’s devastating,” Francesca Bedell, a retired school teacher, said.
The purpose of the Superior Court hearing is to determine if the current settlement between the state and the class of retirees is fair and reasonable.
Tom O’Connell, a retired Westerly teacher of 35 years, says it’s not.
“It’s not fair that is the reason why I am here,” he said “There is people that can’t be here for a variety of reasons and they need representation.”
Hall is now working three part–time jobs to supplement his income. He just wants what he earned.
“For us for the retirees for the people that have done their job. Who put in what was contracted to them, Where is the morality in this?
