Republished with permission from Wyoming News Now, a TV news outlet covering the Cheyenne and Casper areas.
As it currently stands, retired public employees receive the same amount of money through pension plans that they did when George W. Bush was president of the United States.
Lawmakers on the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) are looking into changing that as one of their priority topics for the interim period before next year’s legislative session.
The Wyoming Public Retirement System has many different kinds of retired workers, but unlike Social Security, around 38,000 pensioners in this specific account do not get a little bit more money than last year through the cost of living adjustments, or COLAs.
"This is teachers, people who used to work for the state. People that used to run snowplows, things along those lines,” said Tom Lacock with AARP Wyoming, which has been advocating for an increase. “That account has not had a COLA [cost of living adjustment] to its members since 2008."
Thus, Lacock and AARP Wyoming members have gone in front of the JAC to fight for those who have been dealing with receiving the same amount of money from 18 years ago.
"How do we help these retirees who have been without a cost of living adjustment for a long time, get even a little something to battle inflation?" said Lacock.
Wyoming News Now spoke with Rep. Trey Sherwood (D-Laramie), who is on the JAC. She said she and the other members of the committee are in the "learning and understanding phase with COLA" but that the topic is in their "wheelhouse."
"My constituents say like, ‘Hey, we retired. We love the state of Wyoming. We stay in our communities, we serve. But inflation is really eating into our buying power,’” she said.
Sherwood said some options are on the table, such as a statute or policy that would make adjustments to retirement plans, or by guaranteeing COLAs, but that is somewhat of a fine line to walk.
"We're trying to be sensitive to the goal of getting all of our retiree pension plans to 100% funded so that we can cover our liabilities, but at the same time make these inflationary adjustments," said Sherwood. "It is absolutely time for the state to look into this policy and make sure that we're taking care of the people who've worked so hard to serve us over the years."
Lacock said in 2012 the Legislature did offer a COLA, but only if the specific pensions were funded at over 100%, where now it sits at 82%, a "healthy" percent according to him.
According to Lacock, the Wyoming Coalition for Healthy Retirement also is proposing a different process for COLA.
"Instead of requiring that 100% funding to be a collar, what if we say the actuaries of Wyoming Retirement System are saying we're hoping for a 6.8% return on our investment this year? What if it gets to 7.8%, one point over the top, we split that 1% and we give a very small COLA to state retirees and the state retirement system?” he said.
The next meeting of the JAC will be in Lander on June 22 and 23 starting at 8:30 a.m.
