More on Excessive Public Employee Benefits from National Governors Association

Given the recent discussion of public employee compensation, I thought this excerpt from "The Big Reset," a report issued the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, was worth sharing.

For many years, state and local governments have been increasing the benefit portion of employee compensation at a greater rate than the wage portion.  Much of the reasoning behind this was the belief that state government salaries could not compete with the private sector.  As a result, benefits for state employees gradually became more generous than those in the private sector while state salaries lagged.  Today, the average compensation for state and local employees exceeds that of private workers.  And, by using benefits as a compensation equalizer, states have placed long-term liabilities on their balance sheets.  States would be in much better financial shape now had they adopted competitive salaries years ago and provided a benefit package much closer in value to the private sector. (Emphasis added.)

Right.

Comments

[Lilly]

I wonder how many Washingtonians that don't work for the government know how generous the benefits package is for state workers.

They have better benefits than federal employees which is saying something.

The disparities between state and private employment benefits is mind-boggling and yet nothing is reported in the mainstream news about how much state employment costs taxpayers. This is, of course, not surprising but if more people were educated about this one issue, there would be an uproar considering how many new and increased taxes and fees the Democratic majority wants to impose on us.