The effort to balance the state budget on the backs of public employees will certainly involve some changes to pension contributions. Gov.-elect Scott Walker has even talked about having state employees pay 50 percent of the contributions to their retirement plan. Right now, state, UW and local government workers including teachers pay nothing, with the entire contribution picked up by the “employer” aka “the taxpayers.”
Unfortunately, several newspapers around the state in their effort to back reasonable changes to the retirement system are getting the numbers wrong, saying workers would pick up only 5 percent of their pension contributions.