The Ethan Allen Institute has been working with the Business Roundtable’s Pension Reform Task Force to better understand the problem of our state’s $4.5 billion pension liability and to explore some possible paths to a solution. The 31-page report resulting from this study came out in January.
Worse, if Congress bails out private union pension plans, how will it say no to teachers, police and firefighters who come to the federal government asking for a bailout of their state and local pensions that have an estimated $4 trillion to $6 trillion in unfunded pension promises?
In all seriousness, how do our representatives expect us to pay for all of this? There are only about 320,000 taxpayers in Vermont. This ever-growing burden on so few shoulders is crushing. It has to stop.
In the 12th episode of “Travels With Charlie – Vermont Politics in Real Life,” host Charlie Papillo discusses Vermont’s growing pension crisis with economist Art Woolf and David Coates, retired managing partner at KPMG.
The stock market rocket that took off with the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 has brought some much-needed relief to one of the state of Vermont’s most painful, persistent problems: its troubled public pension funds.
In the final part of our interview with David Coates, retired managing partner at KPMG and a member of the Vermont Business Roundtable, we look at why the state faces a declining workforce and ranks at the bottom for wages and benefits, and consider solutions to revive Vermont’s economy.
In the second part of our interview, David Coates (retired managing partner at KPMG who has years of experience with Vermont’s debt and fiscal woes) proposes corrective measures to address the state’s growing debt of unfunded liabilities.
For years, David Coates has been sounding the alarm about Vermont’s unfunded liabilities regarding public pensions and health care benefits for retirees and their spouses. He joins us to explain this crisis and why no one in power wants to deal with the elephant in the room.
We need to have conversations about substantive reform if we’re serious about paying down our liabilities while making financially responsible decisions for our state’s future.
Vermonters may wonder why there is a continual struggle to fund state initiatives, and why raising taxes is often discussed. One cause of this complex problem is the state’s unfunded pension liabilities for the state employees’ and teachers’ retirement systems.
To address the imbalances in the teachers pension fund, our political leaders must first start down the path of reasonable compromise with the NEA.