The state House has again passed a bill that would give a cost-of-living raise to roughly 59,000 retired teachers and state employees whose pension benefits have been held flat since 2002.
The issue is one of the many idiosyncrasies of the State Employees Retirement System (SERS) and the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement Systems (PSERS), the pension funds that provide retirement pay for state government workers and local school district teachers, respectively.
In 2001, Pennsylvania passed Act 9, which gave significant ongoing benefit boosts to current public employees — and which caused significant problems once the increased costs were fully phased in amid the 2008 financial crisis…