pension

RedactedThe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning follows up our own weekend blog post on Gov. Scott Walker's effort to paint his "study" of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) as merely thoughtful and prudent, rather than rapacious. With a decidedly different take, of course.

More important, the item in the newspaper's Politifact column (link below) makes us revisit a question we've asked before:

When the Journal Sentinel writes about the pension plans of other public or even private workers, shouldn't in the interest of good journalism it fully disclose the fact that its parent company, Journal Communications, Inc., itself has a pension plan? 

The real truth hurtsIn all the uproar over public employee unions and Scott Walker's bomb throwing on the subject, one factoid has been employed over and over: Those cushy jobs that public employees have in Wisconsin include very generous pension benefits. Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel jumped on the bandwagon and editorialized that making state employees and perhaps other public employees contribute more toward their pensions was a no brainer.

All wrong. Because a.) many public employees in Wisconsin already earn less than their direct private-sector counterparts, even including the value of benefits like pensions and health care coverage. And b.) in the case of state workers, your Wisconsin government made it that way, contributing part or all an employee's pension contribution share in exchange for smaller wages.