With the recent news that many of us expect to work to age 80, it's hard to be overly impressed with the Legislature's move to increase retirement age for state employees from 55 to 60.
In truth, any steps toward reconfiguring the state's unsustainable and convoluted public retirement system are welcome as long as the push continues to fix other flaws in the system.
Gov. Deval Patrick has now signed pension reform legislation that is expected to save taxpayers more than $5 billion over the next 30 years. In addition to raising the minimum retirement age, the bill also attempts to close a loophole exploited most recently by former Weymouth Mayor David Madden.
Madden in 2008 decided he wanted to retire at age 52. So he abandoned his job as mayor in the final week of his second term in order to work for five days in his former capacity as fire chief. The maneuver, which is being challenged in court, was designed to boost his pension from $43,200 to $79,800 a year.
The will now require that employees who move into a new job that carries a greater pension benefit late in their career hold that position for at least a year before becoming eligible for a larger pension check.
These and other changes to state pension law are needed not only to protect the state's fiscal solvency but also to protect taxpayer sanity.
A recent survey by Wells Fargo & Co. reports that 25 percent of the respondents said they'll need to work until at least age 80 because they will not have enough money to retire.
Living with such a reality makes it hard to accept that the retirements funded with taxes can begin 10 years earlier than the age at which people are eligible for Social Security.
But much more remains to be done. One area in desperate need of attention is the rampant abuse of disability pensions. While most of these tax-free pensions are for legitimate reasons, there are many cases in which ill-defined regulations and lax enforcement have allowed able-bodied public workers to enjoy this generous benefit based on dubious health claims.
Another area we hope to see addressed soon is "termination" pensions given to workers who lose their political jobs when a new administration is elected to office.
One of the most egregious examples of this was when former legislator and Plymouth County Sheriff Peter Forman went to work for acting Gov. Jane Swift. Before she left office, he was "fired" and started collecting an annual pension of $35,000 at the ripe old age of 43.
It's perfectly legal. He, like so many others, was simply availing himself of the bountiful benefits offered through the grace of government employment. But that doesn't make it right and the state must continue to chip away at sweetheart deals that make the whole pension system look bad.