Workers being driven out of public service

Those committed to reducing the effectiveness of state agencies, shrinking the rolls of public employees and ultimately privatizing public services are winning their agenda, one retirement at a time.

Today's edition of The State reports that public employees are leaving their posts in droves, buying time and taking early retirement before devastating changes to the retirement system go into

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Greenville News defends public employment penalties

Editors of the Greenville News praised today the legislature's move to raise public employees' required contributions to their retirement fund, calling it "not perfect" but "necessary."

Indeed, it's imperfect. It's also unnecessary, as lawmakers could have adopted -- could still amend themselves and adopt -- a host of alternative strategies, from raising sufficient revenue to address the state's

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Lawmakers punish public employees, expand charters

The South Carolina Education Association publishes by email a weekly update of legislative activity, and the update from the past week documents the damage done by our lawmakers to the state's retirement system.

To wit:The House passed H.4976 (Ways and Means Committee), the bill that changes the S.C. Retirement System this week. Included in this bill are:

• Increases in employee contributions

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Out-of-state readers: Welcome, and help!

I've noticed something about the readers of Educating South Carolina over the past year, and it has both entertained and puzzled me: Many of ESC's readers are reading from outside South Carolina.

I don't mean that a bunch of South Carolinians are taking vacations across the border and checking-in via their Blackberries. I mean there have been a good many readers from across the nation, regularly

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House robs veteran state employees' retirement benefits

If this action occurred at the intersection of Main and Gervais streets in Columbia, the police would be called, someone would be arrested and 220,000 charges of grand larceny -- felonies, all -- would be filed.

But because it happened a couple hundred yards away, in the House Ways and Means Committee meeting, it's entirely legal. It's still highway robbery -- still grand larceny -- but it's

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Free Times details state's pension reform dilemma

The cover story in this week's edition of the Free Times of Columbia digs deep into the mess that's been stirred up around our state retirement system and the punitive measures being considered by lawmakers to right the ship.

The entire matter can be boiled down to a simple fact which leads to a simple solution.

Simple fact: During the past 12 or so years, thanks to deep and damaging budget

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Lawmakers propose robbing, then punishing, public employees

It's the same old song.

State Constitution empowers lawmakers to raise revenues necessary to fully fund the state's essential obligations and institutions. It doesn't give that power to the rest of us, only to the 170 men and women sitting in judgment in Columbia.

And when their decisions to rejigger how we invest retirement system funds, at precisely the moment of an economic downturn, results

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Our lawmakers giveth, and our lawmakers taketh away

Tears of joy may have erupted across South Carolina last week as a House committee approved a plan to raise state employees' and educators' salaries by two percent (and law enforcement officers' salaries by five percent), effective July 1. These folks have had their incomes frozen by the legislature for years, with some not seeing an increase since 2007.

But they've dried up pretty quickly as

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Retired teachers ask lawmakers to do the right thing

Issues like these don't get the coverage they deserve. In support of the retired educators in your area, I hope you'll forward this note to your own friends and family, and encourage them to support retirees' efforts to get the benefits they've been promised.

Last week, a group of retirees came to Columbia to speak with lawmakers.Retired Barnwell County school teacher Jerry Bell says he flirted

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Retired public employees blamed for budget instability

The way the dialogue is being framed tells the tale; we can see from a mile away who the bad guys are going to be:South Carolina taxpayers should expect the amount of money they pump into the state pension system to increase in the coming years as the program struggles to close a widening $13 billion shortfall.

At the same time, the state might be forced to shift resources from areas such as

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