November 12, 2009 - 1:27 am

The bill is coming due

We have 22% real unemployment. A shocking number of people have been financially destroyed in this economy. Their financial present is bleak - their future even bleaker.

Those people could only dream of a lifetime six-figure retirement that is guaranteed to many state workers. While huge pensions have largely disappeared from the private sector, they are still routine in government work as our politicians continue to bleed taxpayers and our economy dry.

And it's leading to a coming financial tsunami in our state. Great report Wednesday night by KING-5's Susannah Frame:

The KING 5 Investigators found some of the top retirees include former energy executive Rod Webring, who has the biggest pension of all, about $250,000 a year.

Former Gov. Gary Locke is another top pensioner, with $104,000 a year in state benefits on top of his salary with the Obama administration.

A widow of a Seattle firefighter gets about $155,000 a year, more than triple what her husband made when he retired.

There's nothing wrong with these large pensions. The employees earned them and the state constitution guarantees they'll get them, no matter what.

The problem? These old plans are about to go broke.

...(A) report shows the old pension plans are now “at risk” of "running out of assets," be flat busted, in six to eight years.

"(That would be) the scenario of poor investment returns, if we have another decade like we just had where investment returns for an entire 10-year period were about 4 percent. (Our state) assumes 8 percent. If you have a flat period of investments and the legislature maybe not being able to fully fund these pensions, that's the scenario where you could see the (oldest) plans running out of money," said Smith.

If that happens, the money - about $15 million a month and growing - will come straight out of the general fund, or from higher taxes.

"In other words we'll be writing checks from the budget to pension recipients," said Sen Joe Zarelli, Ridgefield, Wash. "And a lot of things have to go because that's a lot of money to take from the bottom line."

How much? About $2 billion a year for 20 years before the bill would begin to taper down.

With $2 billion the state could hire 27,000 additional teachers.

Or provide health insurance for every uninsured citizen in the state.

Or give free tuition to every higher education student in Washington.

Maybe government has to be more like the private sector and get rid of these pensions. The financial cataclysm is coming in our state. Does anyone care? Can you SayWA?

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Meanwhile, are you ready for a 14% hike in your electric bill?

Seattle City Light customers will see substantial rate increases next year - the question is how much?

On Thursday the City Council's budget committee will consider proposals ranging from increasing rates by 7.9 percent to almost 14 percent.People will be asked to pay more because the utility faces a $140 million deficit on total revenues and funding from more than $1 billion in bonds.

For me, this is truly taxation without representation. I don't live in Seattle - so I don't have a vote for the mayor or city council that decide these hikes. But I'm a City Light customer. "Taxation without representation is tyranny" - it was true 250 years ago - and it's true today.

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Here's one more. Sound Transit's Rainier Valley 4.5-mile light rail line was a year behind schedule and is already $35-million over budget. And now an arbitrator will decide how much more ST will have to pay to a contractor. The additional payment will be somewhere between $23-million and $68-million.

Will Sound Transit - and its media suck-ups - continue to peddle their "on-time and under-budget" nonsense?