Darkness in the beer garden

on Sunday July 27. 2014.
What insights do the below authors have for the employees of Nassau OTB, a public benefit corporation, who are represented by a Suffolk County Legislator, Kevin McCaffrey, who is President of Teamsters Local 707 whose General Meeting on Sunday Sunday July 27 may yet again result in members asking when the PBCG will take over the pension plan. If you have questions for Kevin McCaffrey, please post them hear and the elves will ask them for you. If you supply a recording device the elves will transmit your answer to you.

 Local 707 General Membership Meeting
Will be held at:

  Plattdeutsche Park Restaurant
1132 Hempstead Turnpike
Franklin Square, NY 11010

Kevin McCaffrey will collect a public employee pension whatever happens to his private pension.
In the interim Teamsters Local 707 collects money from the public employees of Nassau OTB, a politician benefit corporation that contains many workers who put in an honest days work for an honest day's pay.
What a quaint concept?

Letters

Multiemployer Retirement Plans Respond to the Threat

Multiemployer retirement plans have crafted a proposal to protect retirees and taxpayers from the kind of multiemployer retirement-plan bailout you fret about.

July 15, 2014 4:53 p.m. ET

Regarding your editorial "Washington's Next Big Bailout" (July 5): You should know that many unions and businesses that contribute to multiemployer retirement plans have crafted a proposal to protect retirees and taxpayers from the kind of multiemployer retirement-plan bailout you fret about.

This proposal, called "Solutions, Not Bailouts," identifies reforms that will make it easier to keep the vast majority of multiemployer retirement plans healthy. It calls for giving trustees flexibility to voluntarily reduce benefits for troubled plans to protect retirees from the significantly more draconian cuts they would face with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. And it provides new retirement options, such as establishing hybrid retirement plans, to make it easier to keep plans solvent.

However, the plan does not call for a taxpayer-funded bailout. Employers and employees are only asking Congress to allow them to take reasonable, responsible steps to protect retirement benefits. That is why many of the measures included in the plan already enjoy broad bipartisan support and serve as the basis for a legislative proposal that is expected to be introduced soon in Congress. That is something the Journal should support.

Stephen E. Sandherr

CEO

Associated General Contractors of America

Arlington, Va.

Sean McGarvey

President

North America's Building Trades Unions

Washington

Since the 1980s the PBGC has faced ruin. During Republican years the apocalypse is further into the future, during Democratic administrations, it's closer at hand. It's simple: Republican administrations generally tell employers and employee representatives, "You made a bargain, make it work. Fund the plans and pay for the insurance." Democratic administrations tend to see the PBGC's "guarantee" as employee compensation and bargain for other benefits beyond funding the promise of insurance. They know ultimately that Congress will make good on the promise even though, as with Fannie and Freddie, the law says no.

And then there's Congress. Around 1986, I accompanied PBGC Executive Director Kathleen Utgoff to a meeting with the late Texas Congressman J.J. "Jake" Pickle. Pickle was one of the few Democrats in Congress with a real interest in the PBGC and its financial foundations. We described then what was happening to the single-payer system, which was quite like what we see today in the multiemployer world.

Our projection was that without comprehensive legislation to change incentives, our system would be overwhelmed and insolvent in three to five years and bankrupt not long after. Pickle's response was brutally frank: "Hell, that's a lifetime! Come back when you're broke and Congress will care."

Congress only operates in "crisis" mode—and does that poorly.

Royal S. Dellinger

Olney, Md.

Mr. Dellinger was principal deputy executive director and chief negotiator for the PBGC from 1985 to 1989.