Retirement Benefits

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. is expected to present a budget Monday that calls for pay raises for all county employees and maintains government services without raising taxes. The proposed spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July is also expected to include contentious changes to employees' retirement benefits that are designed to cut costs. While not discussing specifics, Smith said yesterday that he hoped to present to the County Council "a well-balanced budget, meeting the community's needs and maintaining fiscal responsibility."

Seeking to end unrest among many county workers, Baltimore County elected officials said yesterday that they had settled a dispute between the government and its employees over retirement benefits. The council also adopted a $2.5 billion budget that will not require a tax increase. The council members made minor cuts in the spending plan proposed by County Executive James T. Smith Jr. The retirement issue had become the toughest fiscal decision for the council members in recent weeks.

Ellen Tucker Emerson cut short her nursing career to raise her children, but money was never a worry. Her husband made a good living as a lawyer, and the family didn't miss her income. "We traveled where we wanted," she said. "He bought me furs and jewelry. We stayed at the best hotels." Then the marriage fell apart. Now 51, Tucker Emerson scrambles to pay the bills and wonders how she will get by in retirement. "Maybe I'll be that old lady on the cruise ship working as a singer, and I'll supplement my income working in a nursing home," said Tucker Emerson, who lives on the coast of Maine.

The University System of Maryland agreed yesterday to require its colleges to provide traditional benefits to long-term contractual lecturers, who occupy an expanding second tier of the state's teaching work force. The Sun reported in December that nearly 300 full-time instructors at five colleges were not eligible for retirement and other benefits. At Coppin State and Frostburg State universities, some lecturers who had been in their jobs for more than a decade weren't even getting health insurance.

IF BALTIMOREANS want a neighborhood-by-neighborhood renaissance and a smooth-running city government, they must retool and rebuild the 18-member City Council. They must demand representatives with broader vision, impatient energy and disciplined professionalism.Councils of the past have provided a vibrant forum for discussion of critical community concerns, ranging from civil rights and urban renewal to rat eradication, bulk trash removal and the common pothole. Today's issues are no less urgent.

IF BALTIMOREANS want a neighborhood-by-neighborhood renaissance and a smooth-running city government, they must retool and rebuild the 18-member City Council. They must demand representatives with broader vision, impatient energy and disciplined professionalism.Councils of the past have provided a vibrant forum for discussion of critical community concerns.Recently, though, the council has been undistinguished, serving as a comfortable niche for too many men and women of little drive -- a place to collect the $37,000-a-year salary, to rack up retirement benefits -- to safely graze, as one former veteran of the body put it.The city cannot afford to have a council of timeservers.

A group of current and former employees for Perdue Farms Inc. filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Maryland-based poultry producer, claiming that it did not fully pay them for time worked and cheated them out of retirement benefits.The seven plaintiffs, including an employee at Perdue's Showell plant, requested that the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware be given class action status.If granted, the lawsuit could affect about 14,000 workers at 16 plants, according to Joseph Sellers, an attorney for the workers.

In an emotional march on the Maryland State House, more than 300 state workers vowed last night to mount an intense, personal appeal for better pay and pension benefits.Social workers, correctional officers and other unionized state employees held aloft handmade signs with an election-year reminder for the legislature."I want some respect! And I vote!" shouted George Reason, a veterans employment representative with the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.State workers came from across Maryland to protest that they have not received a raise in several years, and their retirement benefits rank among the lowest in the nation.

Maryland fails to support retired teachersThe Dec. 19 news story regarding large numbers of teachers retiring early hit a nerve.I am a teacher (second career) of only eight years in Baltimore. I recently got a retirement estimate from the state and was horrified to discover that I will only be receiving $480 a month if I remain in the school system until 65, and that the state will deduct medical insurance from that.Your article alluded to retirement benefits for teachers hired after 1980 being the worst in the country.

STATE workers and teachers received an expensive election-year present from the Maryland General Assembly: a $3 billion increase in their retirement benefits. But the job was rushed through the legislative process, with little comprehensive analysis of its ramifications. The result could put state taxpayers at risk.Many of the 113,000 affected employees gained big pension increases. A state worker or teacher with 30 years of service will be able to retire July 1 and see his or her pension jump by a whopping 50 percent immediately.

Baby boomers have lived through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr., the race to the moon and the Communist threat, Watergate and a few wars. Along the way, most became comfortable using computers and the Internet. Now, as they ease into their golden years, they'll be part of another change: They'll be the first generation who can apply for their Social Security benefits completely online. Yesterday, the Social Security Administration announced that people who reach retirement age, as early as 62, can go to the federal agency's Web site and fill out a benefits application.

Seeking to end unrest among many county workers, Baltimore County elected officials said yesterday that they had settled a dispute between the government and its employees over retirement benefits. The council also adopted a $2.5 billion budget that will not require a tax increase. The council members made minor cuts in the spending plan proposed by County Executive James T. Smith Jr. The retirement issue had become the toughest fiscal decision for the council members in recent weeks.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office is pleading with the county commissioners to offer deputies a higher pension plan that would kick in after fewer years of service. Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning said a better pension could help his department recruit and retain more deputies -- a goal of his office as the county considers forming its own local police force. "What we're talking about here is a defined uniform pension, which is the industry standard for law enforcement," Tregoning said.

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. is expected to present a budget Monday that calls for pay raises for all county employees and maintains government services without raising taxes. The proposed spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July is also expected to include contentious changes to employees' retirement benefits that are designed to cut costs. While not discussing specifics, Smith said yesterday that he hoped to present to the County Council "a well-balanced budget, meeting the community's needs and maintaining fiscal responsibility."

The University System of Maryland agreed yesterday to require its colleges to provide traditional benefits to long-term contractual lecturers, who occupy an expanding second tier of the state's teaching work force. The Sun reported in December that nearly 300 full-time instructors at five colleges were not eligible for retirement and other benefits. At Coppin State and Frostburg State universities, some lecturers who had been in their jobs for more than a decade weren't even getting health insurance.

Government, union miss contract deadline The Baltimore County government and the union representing its civilian workers failed to reach a labor agreement yesterday, the deadline for signing a deal. The 1,700 members of the county chapter of the Federation of Public Employees will operate under the current contract for another year, bypassing proposed pay raises and a change in the retirement benefits that some leaders had resisted. George E. Gay, the county's labor commissioner, said the union turned down an offer that would have guaranteed a universal cost-of-living increase of 3 percent and additional raises as high as 10 percent for more than half of the union's members.

Ellen Tucker Emerson cut short her nursing career to raise her children, but money was never a worry. Her husband made a good living as a lawyer, and the family didn't miss her income. "We traveled where we wanted," she said. "He bought me furs and jewelry. We stayed at the best hotels." Then the marriage fell apart. Now 51, Tucker Emerson scrambles to pay the bills and wonders how she will get by in retirement. "Maybe I'll be that old lady on the cruise ship working as a singer, and I'll supplement my income working in a nursing home," said Tucker Emerson, who lives on the coast of Maine.

It's a dirty not-so-secret reality of the academy - the extensive use of contingent faculty members, including contract lecturers and adjunct professors to educate undergraduates. These faculty members, who often teach more but are paid less than some tenured or tenure-track professors, also don't always receive health, retirement and other benefits. That is certainly true at the University System of Maryland, which is rightly taking steps to cure the problem, but should move faster and more comprehensively.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke called yesterday for urgent reform of Social Security and Medicare, warning that failure to do so soon could lead to dire economic consequences for future generations. Speaking to the Economic Club of Washington, Bernanke said that projected funding shortfalls for Social Security and Medicare threaten "large and unavoidable" fiscal consequences. Absent action soon, he warned, the nation could be forced to raise taxes sharply, trim retiree benefits, cut deeply into other government programs, and run up the national debt - or some combination of all. Beginning in 2008, the first wave of baby boomers - 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 - begin taking early retirement.

NORWALK, Conn. -- U.S. accounting rule makers adopted a standard yesterday that will force companies to disclose the future costs of retirement benefits on their balance sheets, wiping out billions of dollars in net worth. The Financial Accounting Standards Board's rule will increase balance-sheet liabilities of the largest U.S. companies by $466 billion, reducing their net worth by 7 percent, according to estimates by Howard Silverblatt, an analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York. "This standard will substantially improve the clarity, completeness, timeliness and usefulness of financial reporting for investors and all others who rely on this information in financial statements to make financial decisions," said Rebecca McEnally, director of capital markets at the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity, an advocacy group affiliated with the CFA Institute in Charlottesville, Va. CFA is the designation for certified financial analyst.