Will Brownsberger -- State Representative, Democrat, 24th Middlesex District

Groups from diverse perspectives — the Boston Foundation, Stand for Children, the Massachusetts Municipal Association, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — are pushing for change in municipal health insurance. I think that the legislature is really beginning to focus on making something happen and I am starting to be hopeful that we’ll have a bill this spring.

Above all, it’s too complicated. Complexity creates abuses and inequities. It also makes the system hard to evaluate and undermines confidence in the system.

Gambling, health care cost control, further pension reform – these are the major issues that the legislature is likely to address this fall after we resolve the Kennedy succession. The theme? Continued financial pressure.

I voted this afternoon for the FY2010 budget which passed with 110 votes in the House and 31 in the Senate, in both branches more than the 2/3 needed to override a possible veto.

The legislature today will enact a strong pension reform that will eliminate rules that give some employees, mostly elected officials, special advantages.

The final Senate budget is based on a lower revenue estimate than the House budget and includes lower numbers for local aid and many other critical programs.

Like roughly 80% of Massachusetts workers, public employees receive health insurance as part of their compensation.   The issue of how much active employees should contribute to the cost of that insurance has been controversial in every recent budget season.    Since the cost of public employee health insurance is just under $1 billion, the employee share [...]

Pension reform is probably the most fundamental and controversial among the reforms on the agenda this year.  Now seated on the Public Service Committee, I expect to give this area quite a bit of my own attention.

I have decided to co-sponsor a controversial health care cost control bill
authored by the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

Informal notes regarding the pension system statute.

An outline of the financial issues that will be front and center throughout the coming legislative session.

Informal notes on Pioneer Institute White Paper: The Elephant in the Room:  Unfunded Public Employee Health Care Benefits and GASB 45. 

Most state and local government full-time workers are entitled to health benefits in Massachusetts with employee contributions often under 20%.  

While the basic structure of the pension system is economically sound, and the fact that the federal social security system has been underfunded is no reason to punish current Masschusetts employees, there are many pension anomalies that annoy taxpayers and merit fixing.

Informal notes on Pioneer Institute White Paper Titled:  “Leaving Money on the Table, the 106 Pension Systems of Massachusetts”.

Problems in the public sector system mirror problems in the social security system.

The average social security retirement in Massachusetts in December 2005 was just over $12,000 per year.

This page contains informal notes on the Pioneer Institute White Paper titled “Public Pensions: Unfair to State Employees, Unfair to Taxpayers”  .

 The Windfall Elimination Provision is designed to prevent higher earning state and local pensioners from being treated as low income earners for the purpose of computing social security benefits.

Public employee pension payments are generally dramatically higher than social security payments for similar  earnings histories.