I wonder what the details are. Many public employee pension plans require mandatory employee contributions, a set percentage of your salary.
If that’s the case here, what happened to the employee contributions? It’s hard to believe that the state just took it.
Oh, wait. It’s “progressive” Washington state. Maybe that’s not so hard to believe after all.
“You can feed 13 families with that pension!”
The plan was almost 200% funded WITHOUT employee contributions. In another time, I was a pension rep for my city’s fire/police pension plan. We contributed a % of pay commensurate with benefit changes made to the plan to benefit retirees. We always knew never get to a point where you don’t contribute to the plan, no matter how well investments do for this very reason. This Washington plan reportedly hadn’t required contributions for 25 years. That’s just a flashing neon sign to corrupt politicians to do exactly what they did
My guess is Washington State canceled the pension fund, took the proceeds and moved it to a bigger fund. Cops and firefighters are not going to lose pensions.