Americans for Prosperity Comment on Pension Reform

The Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) congratulates Senator Debbie Lesko, Governor Doug Ducey, the Reason Foundation and other stakeholders on successfully pushing a pension reform package through the legislative process.

But AFP's state director for Arizona, Tom Jenney, says:

Free-market reformers didn’t get everything we wanted from the package, and municipalities will be digging their way out of sunk debt costs for years to come, but the reforms will dramatically reduce the long-term risk to taxpayers from the existing public safety pension scheme.  In the current game, politicians write blank checks to government employees, knowing that those bills will be paid by taxpayers far in the future, when the politicians are safely out of office.  Going forward, new public safety employees will have significant “skin in the game,” since they will have to personally bear half the costs of any proposed increases in pension benefits.