This commentary is by Sandra Mings Lamar of Barnet, is an experienced teacher with more than 30 years in the field of education. Since 2007 she has been a teacher and administrator in Vermont and New Hampshire schools and was a 2016 Rowland Fellow. Her husband is a second-grade teacher, and their three children are all young adults.
Do you use a credit card? Do you responsibly pay off the minimum balance at the end of each month? Most of us at least try, and many of us do.
Now imagine that after 10 or 15 years of faithfully paying off the balance of your credit card each month, you receive notice from your credit card company that for the last 15 years they have not been giving the money you sent them to the businesses where you used your card. They have instead been using it for other purposes — to develop a different branch of their corporation, or to pay off other debts incurred by their corporation — and now they are unable to pay the credit card debt owed to those businesses. The money you gave them for that purpose is gone.
To rectify the situation, they are making you responsible for those debts again. So, in addition to your monthly bill, they are adding a 5% surcharge that you will never recover. Instead, this money will be used to offset the initial irresponsibility, and misuse of the funds you have already paid them for bills you thought were already covered. In addition, they will require you to work with them longer if you want them to honor your contractual agreement with them.
A friend of mine recently explained Vermont’s retirement fund crisis to me in this way.
If this sounds outrageous to you, it is. If it sounds familiar to you, it is.
This is precisely what the state of Vermont has done with the mandatory retirement funds they have drawn out of teachers’ and state employees’ paychecks every month for years. And now, to fix their error, they simply want to take a greater percentage out of each person’s paycheck and increase the retirement eligibility age to cover their losses. This money will not be returned to those employees whose checks it was taken from. Instead, it will be used to offset the government’s poor management of the retirement funds already collected from teachers and state employees.
The state broke its contract with these teachers and these employees. Why is the onus of fixing the problem placed on the victims of the state’s breach of contract?
If Vermont really wants to recruit a highly qualified, diverse pool of teachers, this is not the way to attract them. If Vermont really wants to recruit young people to stay and live and work and support the communities they come from, this is not the way to attract them. If Vermont really wants to recruit dedicated, diverse personnel to serve in government positions, this is not the way to attract them.
If you care about your schools, your teachers, and the people serving you through government, write your legislators. Write the state treasurer. Write the governor. Tell them this is wrong.
The burden to fix this mess should not be placed on the individuals who have simply been responsibly allowing Vermont to take retirement funds from their earnings.
