Retirees deserve more from legislators

Legislators, I am sure you remember that you took the cost of living raises away for PERS 1 retirees. Well several bills have been submitted in the last couple of years and you haven’t passed any of them.

Now I see that there are millions of dollars more in the budget and you still aren’t bringing our raises back but you are giving state employees a 6 percent raise. That tells us that when we were working to keep things going smoothly in the state you thought we were worthwhile. Now that we are retired and don’t make you look good, you just don’t care about us.

We are trying to live on the same amount of retirement we got years ago and the cost of living has risen 11 percent. We cannot keep up with the rising costs. So while you sit in your nice warm houses and eat nice warm meals, don’t give a thought to those of us that are trying to decide if we should fill our prescriptions, pay to heat our house or buy food. These decisions are real for us.

This is the thanks we get for being good employees. Give us back what we were promised during our working lives. Just remember, we can vote against you when you run for office. Maybe some new blood will see the problems we face every day, because obviously you don’t.

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Retirees deserve more from legislators."