Norma Anderson - National Conference of State Legislatures

National Conference of State Legislatures
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Washington DC 20009
(202) 624-5400
(202) 737-1069 fax
The Forum for America's Ideas

Statement of Majority Leader Norma Anderson: Colorado House of Representatives; Senator-Elect, Colorado Senate; Co-Chair, NCSL Taskforce on Social Security Reform

Mr. President, the White House Conference on Social Security begins an unprecedented opportunity for the nation to re-examine Social Security. State legislatures are willing to work with you to find solutions. The nation's state legislators feel very strongly about one aspect of Social Security reform, the extension of mandatory Social Security coverage to new state and local government employees. NCSL vigorously opposes any efforts to extend mandatory coverage to additional groups of state and local government employees in any package to restore solvency and integrity to Social Security.
The Social Security Act of 1935 specifically prohibited state and local government employees from coverage, in part, because state and local government retirement plans already provided retirement benefits to these employees. State and local government plans predate Social Security and provide comparable, and in many cases, superior benefits to public employees.
State and local government retirement systems effectively provide retirement and supplemental benefits, such as health care, to state and local employees and their families. These systems effectively manage retirement funds on behalf of public employees and are models for effective private retirement savings that should be studied for best practices, not raided as a short term fix to extend social security for two years. State and local employees earned these funds, contributed to these plans and in many cases bargained successfully for the range of retirement benefits offered by state and local government retirement systems. State and local employees with a proven commitment to personal savings should not be punished for their planning and initiative.
Many of those critical of state and local government retirement plans have claimed that mandatory coverage is "only fair." We disagree. It is not fair to resolve the Social Security solvency problem at the expense of public employees who have saved and planned for their retirement in good faith and in partnership with their employers, state and local government.
States would unfairly bear the cost of restoring solvency to Social Security as illustrated in the following table. In my own state of Colorado, there are well over 200,000 state and local government employees and retirees who are not covered by Social Security. Taking new hires out of our retirement systems would endanger the solvency of our retirement plans, putting retired public employees at risk of losing healthcare, cost of living increases and other benefits. State and local government employees did not create Social Security's insolvency problem. They must not shoulder the burden in reforming the system.

For more information contact Gerri Madrid, Senior Policy Specialist or Sheri Steisel, Senior Committee Director.

Estimated Social Security Coverage of Workers with State or Local Government Employment, 1992 [1]

Sorted by the Number of Workers Covered by State and Local Government Plans Only (Uncovered Workers)

State [2] Uncovered Workers Covered Workers All Workers % Covered

California 1,129,000 1,069,000 2,198,000 49%

Ohio 739,000 61,000 800,000 8%

Texas 562,000 793,000 1,355,000 59%

Illinois 470,000 515,000 985,000 52%

Louisiana 282,000 114,000 396,000 29%

Massachusetts 279,000 46,000 325,000 14%

Colorado 208,000 122,000 330,000 37%

New York 120,000 1,553,000 1,673,000 93%

Georgia 119,000 461,000 580,000 79%

Michigan 116,000 674,000 790,000 85%

Kentucky 84,000 241,000 325,000 74%

Connecticut 81,000 174,000 255,000 68%

Florida 76,000 927,000 1,003,000 92%

Missouri 72,000 313,000 385,000 81%

Wisconsin 65,000 399,000 464,000 86%

Washington 63,000 374,000 437,000 86%

Nevada 61,000 32,000 93,000 34%

Maine 59,000 51,000 110,000 46%

Indiana 58,000 378,000 436,000 87%

Tennessee 56,000 353,000 409,000 86%

Pennsylvania 50,000 690,000 740,000 93%

Alaska 48,000 34,000 82,000 41%

North Carolina 47,000 532,000 579,000 92%

Virginia 47,000 471,000 518,000 91%

Maryland 39,000 357,000 396,000 90%

Alabama 36,000 324,000 360,000 90%

New Jersey 35,000 556,000 591,000 94%

New Mexico 30,000 145,000 175,000 83%

South Carolina 30,000 280,000 310,000 90%

Iowa 28,000 242,000 270,000 90%

Kansas 24,000 233,000 257,000 91%

Mississipl 20,000 202,000 222,000 91%

Arkansas 19,000 172,000 191,000 90%

Hawaii 19,000 88,000 107,000 82%

Oregon 18,000 246,000 264,000 93%

Utah 18,000 147,000 165,000 89%

Oklahoma 17,000 250,000 267,000 94%

Arizona 16,000 324,000 340,000 95%

Montana 16,000 77,000 93,000 83%

New Hampshire 14,000 74,000 88,000 84%

Nebraska 13,000 152,000 165,000 92%

Rhode Island 13,000 61,000 74,000 82%

Wyoming 10,000 56,000 66,000 85%

North Dakota 9,000 61,000 70,000 87%

West Virginia 9,000 145,000 154,000 94%

Delaware 5,000 60,000 65,000 92%

Idaho 5,000 108,000 113,000 96%

South Dakota 3,000 72,000 75,000 96%

Vermont 2,000 50,000 52,000 96%

Minnesota [3] -236,000 658,000 422,000 156%

Total for All States 5,102,000 15,518,000 20,620,000 75%

Source: 1998 Green Book (from the Office of Research and Statistics, Social Security Administration).
1 Includes seasonal and part-time workers for whom State and local government employment was not their major job.
2 Information not available for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Territories.
3 Figures from Minnesota appear to have been transposed in the original table. They appear here as in the original table.
Prepared by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
For more information contact Gerri Madrid or Sheri Steisel at (202) 624-5400.