Dan Haar: New Long-Term Savings Figures For State Employee Concessions Show It’s A Solid Deal
Dan Haar – Hartford Courant
Finally some good news for Connecticut’s battered fiscal and economic picture: Early numbers on the long-term effect of the proposed concession deal with state employee unions point to even more savings than Gov. Dannel P. Malloy suggested.
The pension savings would total $11.9 billion over 30 years, starting with a cut of $259 million in the coming year. And it would turn a $20.7 billion unfunded liability — one of the main millstones strangling the state economy — into a $1.5 billion surplus.
On the health coverage side, the savings, still not reported to state officials, is expected to be even larger. The change to Medicare Advantage alone would immediately knock the health liability down by $5.3 billion to $15.6 billion.
The savings calculations, from Segal Consulting on the health side and Cavanaugh Macdonald on the pension side, were provided by the state Office of Policy and Management at my request. They do not include some significant changes that are part of the concession deal, such as limits on how much overtime can be used to calculate pensions and higher premiums and payments for retirees not yet on Medicare.
