In an effort to ease Michigan’s budget woes and create a smaller government, the Michigan Senate passed a bill Thursday offering early retirement options to Michigan’s employees.
The bill, which passed 21-16, would available only to employees with a combined age and years of employment that add up to at least 75 years and higher. The option would affect about 12,000 of the 52,000 state employees.
An additional 3,000 employees could purchase credits to become eligible for retirement.
“While the Senate remains focused on reforms and efficiencies, the House continues an unaffordable and irresponsible spending spree that we cannot pay for,” Senate majority leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said in a press release.
“The governor proposed a budget that was simply too large in scope, and the House (of Representatives) bills passed in recent days take spending even beyond the administration’s recommendations.”
The early-retirement option would not include correctional workers who perform a critical safety role for the state but does include employees in the civil service, judiciary, executive and legislative departments of the state, said Matt Marsden, spokesperson for Bishop.
Fear of losing correctional workers was a downside for Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s administration and some members of the Senate, Marsden said.
The proposed deal would stretch throughout a five-year period, and employees would be offered the average of their highest salary over a three-year period, so buyout packages would vary from employee to employee, Marsden said.
State employees are both excited and concerned about the bill and are waiting to be approached by Bishop at the bargaining table, said Alan Kilar, financial secretary and treasurer for the State Employees Local United Auto Workers 6000.
“If Mike Bishop is serious, he will bring it to the table,” Kilar said. “If they are serious about passing this, they need to come to the table and talk about it because right now it sounds like politics.”
In 2002, an early retirement option for Michigan employees resulted in the replacement of one in four retired employees, leaving the state short handed.
“This is all about citizens and an early out will result in more children left unprotected, more gas pumps and bridges left uninspected and fewer officers staffing our prisons,” said Trevor Thomas, spokesman for Gov. Granholm. “We have the fewest number of state employees in at any time since the early 1970s.”
The Local UAW 6000 covers 17,000 state employees who work as administrative and human service support.
“It was very similar, they only replaced half the employees so the state had some serious problems with meeting deadlines and getting services to the public,” Kilar said.
The Senate does not have a plan to replace each worker for every state employee that takes the early retirement – that would defeat the purpose, Marsden said.
“It’s up to the State Department … an eye has to be kept on maintaining a smaller government,” he said.
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