Legislator perk irks workers

Utah's 104 part-time legislators don't get much in the way of retirement for their years of lawmaking service — $10 a month for each year in office.

But lawmakers quietly voted seven years ago to start giving free or heavily subsidized health insurance to retired legislators, a benefit ballooning in cost, doubling in three years.

Angry state workers who saw their health insurance retirement benefits cut back by the 2005 Legislature are questioning legislators' benefits.

The state health insurance for retirees was given first to state workers in the late 1980s in lieu of cash pay raises, legislators were told during debate over the controversial HB213 during the 2005 Legislature.

It was given a decade later to legislators as a perk, a nice benefit for the low-paid, long-serving lawmakers. At first, it didn't cost much.

Legislators can "retire" at 62 with the same comprehensive health insurance they received as sitting lawmakers, paid for by the state. When they reach 65, the state pays for a supplemental plan that covers costs that Medicare doesn't pay.

In arguing in favor of HB213, lawmakers in the 2005 Legislature said the health care/unused sick leave conversion benefit for thousands of upcoming state worker retirees could, within a few years, balloon to $250 million or more, crippling state finances.

"It's being fiscally responsible and looking out after all the taxpayers," who won't be able to afford the huge bill that would have been coming, said House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-Provo, when HB213 passed the House.

The state has approximately 20,000 employees, only 104 legislators. So while the costs of legislators' retirement benefits are growing, the retired legislators' health-care premiums don't have anywhere near the possible financial impact as those of the more numerous regular state workers' benefits.

Oddly enough, because the Legislature's separate pension fund has earned so much interest over the past few decades that the Legislature has not been putting any cash into it. Currently, the fund is actually 123 percent funded, retirement officials say, even though 221 retired lawmakers are now getting pensions totaling $712,000 a year.

But with rising health care costs and more legislators reaching retirement age, each year lawmakers have had to put more and more cash into the Legislature's health care insurance account for retired lawmakers, officials say.