Many City Retirees On Their Own To Navigate New Pension Details

There are 790 city retirees working out what static pensions and moving to either a uniform city healthcare plan or medicare will mean for their personal budgets, and most are handling that solo.

Rosemary Booth Galloogly, RI Director of Revenue, explained the new pension and healthcare terms for retirees during a Feb. 25 meeting at Woonsocket High School. The changes are the retirees' part in the Budget Commission's plan to make up the city's $14.5 million deficit. Those changes are:

• Suspension of Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) - meaning pensions frozen at their current rate but not cut.
• Transfer of eligible retirees to Medicare by March 31. Ineligible retirees will be switched to a standardized city health plan until they reach eligible age. 

Gallogly recommended that retirees organize and hire an attorney to arrange a binding agreement with safeguards and checks to make sure the city stays on top of its pension obligations in the future.

"The vast majority, as far as I know, have not organized yet," said Jennifer Findlay, CPA and state-appointed financial advisor to the Budget Commission from the RI Division of Municipal Finance. 

Findlay said the Budget Commission has received about 100 letters from retirees asking for help working out the details of their individual pensions. She said the Commission recently sent out a letter to retirees who are Medicare eligible to clear up some of the questions.

At the meeting, one retiree, Jim Marvel, said it's unreasonable to expect individual retirees to seek their own counsel.

Council President John Ward, a Budget Commission member, said it's unfortunate, but they're working within the bounds set for them by state law. Also, he said, there's not much room for the city to negotiate on the terms of the changes, and work to solve the deficit isn't going to make anyone happy. "We're just doing the best we can," Ward said.