April 26, 2012 12:35 AM UTC

Colorado PERA Pension Theft Lawsuit and How to Help.

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• by: PolDancer

The group fighting the Colorado Legislature’s theft of contracted pension benefits (saveperacola.com) posted a Colorado Court of Appeals schedule on their website today (as follows):

“We have received notice of the following scheduled dates for the lawsuit:

4/23/12 – Appellees to Supplement Record

5/29/12 – Appellee’s Answering Brief

6/12/12 – Appellant’s Reply Brief

PERA and the State of Colorado are the appellees. Gary R. Justus et al are the appellants.”

Saveperacola also posted a request for help from Colorado PERA members, retirees and any others who support the rule of law in the United States.  Saveperacola is raising funds for attorney fees to combat the theft of retirement benefits that were earned by PERA members over decades.

Are you a PERA member or retiree?  Have you paid into PERA for many years?  Do you expect the Colorado Legislature and Colorado PERA to honor their contractual obligations to you?  

Well, your expectations are not grounded in reality.

It is pathetic, but the Colorado Legislature and Colorado PERA will not honor their legal commitments to you short of a court order.  That has become quite clear during Colorado PERA’s political, legal and lobbying campaigns.

If Colorado PERA members and retirees do not act, our interests will be brushed aside.

In a nutshell, the Colorado Legislature and Colorado PERA are trying to avoid their debts to public employees.  The Colorado Legislature has the ability to “define” a pension “crisis” into existence and then attempt to use that “crisis” to justify the breach of pension contracts.

The Legislature can create a funding “crisis” by skipping its annual required contributions to the PERA trust funds.  For a decade the Colorado Legislature has done just that.  It has ignored the level of contributions that it must make every year to the PERA pension in order keep it financially sound.  This level of annual contributions (called the ARC) is determined each year by Colorado PERA’s actuaries.  To date, the skipped contributions exceed $3.5 billion.  Just this week the Colorado Legislature is skipping its annual required pension contributions in order to provide $100 million in discretionary tax relief.  Having ignored its obligations for years, the Legislature would like to compensate for its negligence by essentially stealing money from Colorado PERA members and retirees.

The Colorado Legislature and Colorado PERA are also trying to use the volatility of investment markets to justify their breach of contracts.  Remember that Colorado PERA members and retirees are members of a defined benefit plan.  They do not bear any “market risk.”  In a defined benefit pension, “market risk” is borne by the sponsors of the plan, that is, the State of Colorado and Colorado local governments.  The Colorado Legislature and Colorado PERA want to retroactively change the terms of our statutory pension contract.

Here’s a quote from the new post on the saveperacola website:

“Remember, the bottom line here is that unless we prevail in this lawsuit, PERA is off the hook for keeping the promises it made to every member and retiree.”

What can you do?  Go to the saveperacola.com website, click on the “Support” tab, and send them a contribution.  Call or e-mail every PERA member and retiree you know and ask them to send support.  Call your public employee union representatives and ask them how they can stand idly by while the state attempts to breach its contracts with public employees.  Their public sector union colleagues across the country are aggressively defending the pension rights of their members.

Copy this post and e-mail it to your PERA member buddies.

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