With so many retirement bills filed in both the House and Senate, it’s difficult to make heads or tails of them all.

For example, Sen. Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas), chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee has personally pre-filed 37 retirement bills for the upcoming session which begins at noon on March 12.

His counterpart, House Retirement Committee Chairman Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell), has pre-filed 15 such bills. They run the gamut in addressing retirement issues for municipal employees, registrars of voters, clerks of courts, teachers, school employees, sheriffs and, of course, state employees.

And those do not even include any retirement bills authored by the other 142 legislators.

And while the main thrust is to placate Gov. Bobby Jindal in his efforts to reduce retirement benefits, increase employee contributions, and to tighten retirement qualifications, nothing has been said by the administration to address problems inherent with attempts at pension reform: namely the Louisiana State Constitution.

One person who has not been shy in criticizing Jindal’s plan is Cindy Rougeou, executive director of the Louisiana State Employees’ System (LASERS).

Rougeou says Jindal is seeking to impose an additional payroll tax on state workers in the form of a 3 percent increase in employee contributions—money that will not even be used to retire the state retirement system’s $6.3 billion debt.

She also says that Jindal is:

• Targeting workers who are barred from lobbying on their own behalf, those least able to speak up in opposition to his plan;

• Attempting to force state employees to work longer for reduced benefits;

• Giving legislators false information as to the percentage that employees contribute to the cost of their retirement as compared to the state’s share;

• Ignoring the fact that the current unfunded accrued liability (UAL) came about in the first place because the state reneged for decades on paying its required contribution;

• Attempting to violate both the State and U.S. Constitutions in proposing sweeping changes to the retirement system.

Those are some pretty serious charges, coming as they do from a state employee when the governor has shown himself to be more than capable of retribution against recalcitrant underlings.

Rougeou, however, is said to be beyond the reach of Jindal’s wrath. She is hired by a LASERS board that is elected, not appointed by the governor, thus her unrestrained defense of state employees and her criticism of the governor’s retirement package.

But if Jindal is really looking for a scapegoat, he need look no further than the first floor of the State Capitol where the House and Senate chambers are located.

In 1987 the legislature passed a bill calling for a constitutional amendment that would require all the state’s retirement systems to be actuarially sound with UALs being paid off by the year 2029. Voters approved the amendment but as usual, there was a fatal flaw in the wording of the bill that allowed legislators to begin tinkering with the repayment schedule.

And tinker they did, passing Act 497 in 2009—on Jindal’s watch, by the way—that created a new payment schedule so that the state could reap a savings of $500 million. It is the state’s failure to make the necessary payments to bring the systems into manageable shape that created the current crisis in the retirement funds.

Each year between 1959 and 1969 and from 1983 to 1991, the state failed to pay its required contribution to LASERS. Not once. In 1963, for example, the 6 percent paid by the state was less than half the required 12.26 percent and in 1960, the state’s 6 percent was barely more than half the 11.81 percent required contribution. In 1990, the 7.8 percent paid by the state was far short of the 14.09 percent requirement.

Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, in presenting Jindal’s executive budget for Fiscal Year 20120-13, told members of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget that the employees’ share amounts to less than 27 percent of total retirement contributions while the state’s share exceeds 73 percent.

Not so fast, says Rougeou. The administration’s accounting, she said, “apparently formed the basis for the justification that employees should now pay an addition 3 percent of salary toward their retirement.”

She went on to say, “The cost of the accruing benefit in 1988 was 12.8 percent of payroll, which we refer to as the normal cost. Of that amount the employee paid 7 percent and the state paid 5.8 percent. As such, in 1988 the employee contributed about 54.69 percent (of the total) toward retirement. Though somewhat less today, current rank and file employees “are still paying about 54 percent of the cost of their accruing benefit,” she said–double Rainwater’s claim.

So now Jindal is calling on state employees to kick in an additional 3 percent to the retirement fund. That wouldn’t be so bad if the extra 3 percent went to their retirement or even to pay down the UAL, but it doesn’t. The money will go straight into the state general fund so that Jindal can smooth over an anticipated $900 million budget shortfall this year.

Even that would be more palatable if Jindal was doing that across the board, but he isn’t. He promised the state’s college and university presidents that if they’d keep their mouths shut and not oppose his retirement package, they could share in the $100 million savings from university and college employees’ additional 3 percent.

While that comes to less than $5 million for each of the state’s 23 public colleges and universities, it hardly seems fair that they keep their 3 percent in-house while the remaining state employees must pony up their additional 3 percent to keep Jindal’s budgetary boat afloat.

Nor is it fair to tell a 42-year-old state employee with 20 years’ experience that he can scrap his plans to retire at 30 years, that he must continue working until he is 67. And when that employee purchased four years’ “air time” a few years back to enhance his retirement, it cost him $18,000.

If he works until age 67, he will have 45 years as a state employee. State employees currently can retire at 100 percent of their salaries with 40 years’ service. Will he be required to continue paying into the system past his 40 years? What about that $18,000? Will he get that back? He bought the time in good faith and in the belief that the state would honor its commitment to him just as the woman in the state agency next door paid $60,000 for 13 years’ air time. What’s to become of their investments?

Louisiana employees do not pay into social security, which makes any comparison with other systems invalid. Apples and oranges. A lifetime state worker will never qualify for social security benefits as do workers in the private sector.

The governor’s retirement package also contains a provision that retirement benefits for currently active employees be based on the formula of 2.5 percent times an average of five years’ highest income times years of service. That is a change from the current formula that computes retirement based on three years’ average earnings.

As things now stand, that would have negligible impact; employees are going into their fourth straight year without merit raises but extending the work years to age 67 could be devastating to certain employees. Depending on their dates of birth, some employees who retire after 30 years could see their benefits cut by more than half than if he/she had been born one day earlier.

Jindal, while attempting to force state employees to work longer and pay more into their retirement, is also trying to revamp their retirement from a defined benefit to a defined contribution, similar to 401(k) investment account with no guarantee of return.

Former House Speaker Jim Tucker (R-Terrytown) said last year the 3 percent increase in employee contributions was a tax and would require a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate. Jindal has vowed throughout his term that he will veto any new taxes that appear on his desk and so obviously does not see the 3 percent increase as a new tax any more than he saw college tuition increases last year as a new tax.

But the bigger question is one of constitutionality, both state and federal.

“Many of those employees already have ‘vested’ rights in their retirement benefits,” Rougeou said. “To change provisions such as those targeted would violate the (U.S.) constitutional restriction against impairing existing benefits. She cited Article X, Section 29(B) of the State Constitution which says “…membership in any retirement system of the state…shall be a contractual relationship between employee and employer.”

“And of course the U.S. Constitution in Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1, states, ‘No state shall…pass any…ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts…’” she said.

“Proposing changes that are unconstitutional attains only protracted litigation and doesn’t result in a sound pension system,” she said.

She said Jindal should not count on using any of the anticipated $450 million in taxpayer savings resulting from his pension reform to help balance the budget because there will be court challenges if the administration is successful in getting the bills passed.

One must be starting to wonder by now just how many more shell games Jindal will introduce to cover his budgetary backside. Retirement and the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits, state prisons and Medicaid are all on the table this year, so what financial wizardry will he conjure up for the next three years?