Fighting the lies
Detroit Police Officers protesting pension cuts in 2010.
My husband Jim and I wrote the rebuttal to an outrageous op-ed piece that appeared in the Boston Globe claiming your pensions are “eating taxpayers alive.” They printed it in the Sunday edition. Please feel free to use this in your own jurisdiction – make the changes that are needed and put your name on it. This letter contains the best argument to fight the propaganda about your pensions – that they are a very small part of overall government expenditures. So these claims they make, with no data to back them up, are not true.
— Cynthia Brown, Publisher, American Police Beat
Here’s the letter:
Jeff Jacoby (“Public pensions are eating taxpayers alive,” Op-ed, March 23) is perpetuating a myth that the threat of bankruptcy of local governments, like what we saw in Detroit, is caused by huge pensions going to our retired firefighters, cops, teachers, and others working for our local governments. But data indicate that pension expenditures are not the cause of budget shortfalls. Nationwide, recent spending on pensions for public sector retirees amounts to just 2.9 percent of total government expenditures, a steady decline from a high of 4.2 percent in 1985.
The real blame for our ongoing economic distress goes to failed policies in Washington and speculative excesses on Wall Street. In 2009 state tax revenues fell considerably. Safety net expenditures were increased to assist the millions of people who lost their jobs. Increases in expenditures were compounded by the astronomical increase in health care costs.
It is interesting to note that during the recession the majority of the bailout funds went to large banks and corporations, not state and local governments that are now struggling financially.
We must set the record straight and help the public understand the truth. The conventional wisdom among the electorate is that teacher and firefighter pensions have caused the problem. This is a fallacy that cannot go unchallenged any longer.
Jim Brown
Rockport, Mass.
The writer is a former professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the former director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
