The good people of Florida elected this governor and this legislature. Oh yeah. And I will wager that a fairly large number of state employees and teachers in Florida voted the ticket that they ran on, and hoorah-ed their "No new taxes, cut all spending except to give breaks to private sector employers. Budget, tighten the belt" platform. After all, we're good moral respectable people, and we all have to budget, right?
The trouble is, we state employees are so complacent with the idea that we have accepted being tremendously underpaid by comparison to the private sector in exchange for the expectation that eventually after many years of service we'd be able to retire with fairly good and secure benefits. We don't see ourselves as being paid our pensions by the government, as part of that demon "government spending" which is what these people are cutting and going after relentlessly. And no, a state employee can not sue the legislature for something they've passed cutting salaires or benefits. It's "the will of the people."
When you have made so much less per year than you might have in private industry that you have not been able to accumulate large sums in your retirement programs, you always sort of thought, oh well, there'll always be my state pension and then my Social Security to count on. Think again. Neither of these is sacred, both state and federal benefits can be touched, reduced, taken away at the power of the electorate.
While cbg is right and it won't happen overnight, probably won't nip you with 25 years in already too badly, the whole state retirement pension system in Florida and many other states is eroding like a sandy beach in a hurricane.
As people in the private sector have lost so many of those well paid jobs in this recession, they've looked with resentment at those who have accepted state jobs with safety instead of higher salaries. We don't have to give those useless state/federal/local employees this pension, you know? The elected officials have figured it out at many levels.
And the only people who will not suffer from the lack of state services will be the ultra rich who refused to pay the taxes in the first place and voted in the legislators who excused them. Now they're the ones who have got the money to cover their own retirements without pensions or social security, hire their own road pavers, their own security forces, concierge doctors, and send their children and grandchildren to private schools.....
My advice is that you and your husband become active in politics and begin to proclaim the news that governments can not run on air, that if no one is willing to pay taxes, then eventually the money to provide all state services will falter. Point out to people that the services your department provides are important and worth spending state dollars on, and that when you are out after so many years, the work you did was worth the retirement pension you were promised to receive for having done it.
