Sudden Retirements Wreak Havoc in Wisconsin

[Donnachaidh]

http://progressive.org/rc0227b11.html

On Friday night, the eve of a massive rally in Madison, Wisconsin, against Governor Scott Walker's union-busting "budget repair bill," a few state employees gathered for a hasty retirement party at Genna's, a downtown bar directly across from the Capitol building.

Over pitchers of beer, a group of lawyers from the state public defender's office were saying goodbye to Patrick Donnelly, longtime attorney at the agency.

Donnelly decided to retire on Wednesday--24 hours after he and his colleagues were informed by labor lawyers at the Boardman law firm that a provision in Governor Walker's bill could mean he would lose health care benefits worth tens of thousands of dollars, unless he gave notice immediately.

:snip:

Across the state, record numbers of public employees are requesting retirement papers. Many, like Donnelly, have been advised that if they don't get out quickly, they stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits they were counting on for retirement.

More at the link --

[peacetalksforall]

1. Walker - Wisconsin .... a Koch Experiment in taking this country down by a canyon like notch.

[RKP5637]

4. The country is under siege and many Americans still don't get what is going on. They

stupidly think this is just about unions, their fault, and has nothing to do with them. This is a test to see how far they can take it ...

[drm604]

2. K&R

:kick:

[postulater]

3. My brother in law just retired from the revenue service because of this.

He saw it coming and knew it would be bad.

[Starry Messenger]

k&r

[lpbk2713]

5. Walker is doing to Wisconsin ...

what Dumbya did to the rest of the country.

He won't stop until there is nothing left of it to be fixed.

[Poll_Blind]

6. The Republicans just can't fuck up Wisconsin too quickly for their tastes.

Pb

[rzemanfl]

7. I am in Florida and will either be in litigation or retirement by the

end of the year thanks to Rick Scott.

[old mark]

8. K&R-In PA, when I worked as a State employee, then governor Rendell

announced a new policy for employee's and retiree's increased co-pay for health insurance, to begin on a specific date several months ahead. The state was flooded with so many retirement papers it took as much as 4 monthster their actual retirement date for reps from our state employee's retirement system to meet with retired workers...and another 2 to 3 months for workers to get their first pension payment. I retired in mid March, got my first retirement pay at the end of August. We had to hit my retirement investments/savings very hard to make it through that period. But I would never go back. Many state workers are treated poorly as a matter of course by the politicians and this is just another example of that.

mark

[snappyturtle]

9. OMG! Walker is a piece of slime. Watch a bunch retire and they lose

their health care and benefits anyway.

[BillyJack]

10. +1

yep. That was my first thought exactly.

"Watch a bunch retire and they lose their health care and benefits anyway."

[snappyturtle]

16. Great minds think alike!! Welcome to DU !

:hi:

[Lars39]

11. The expertise lost by these forced early retirements will not be easily regained,

resulting in less efficiency in governments in the long run.

[undeterred]

12. This is also happening in the Dept of Workforce Development

and the people left behind who are too young to retire are scared. There are not enough people left behind to do the volume of work that they have to do now, and its going to get worse.

[Bake]

13. Anybody who isn't outraged by all this ...

... just isn't paying attention.

Bake

[Enthusiast]

14. Honestly, most people just

aren't aware of it. The M$M is covering this like they did the health care debate, the Iraq War and proposed entitlements cuts. Our media is worse then useless.

[Blue_Tires]

15. agreed...