I am not a state employee or teacher, yet I know and have worked with many teachers and state employees. Gov. LePage’s proposed freeze on state employee/teacher cost of living allowances (COLA) is bad enough.

What’s most alarming is the proposal to reduce the COLA cap from 4 percent to 2 percent — a significant loss of income over the years.

Already modest state/teacher pensions will become a pathway to the poorhouse in the face of expected inflationary pressures. The proposal is mean-spirited and unethical, and it’s wrong to dump the mismanagement of the state’s pension system onto the backs of state employees and teachers. If reducing promised benefits to state employees and teachers is not illegal — and apparently it’s not — it should be.

We can all put a human face on these employees and retirees. They are teachers who taught you and your kids, state employees who protect our land, build our infrastructure and establish a safety net for those that need a helping hand.

They are public servants who invested in their own education, donated countless unpaid hours with dedication and without accolades. They are teachers who spent their own paltry paychecks to equip classrooms when schools didn’t provide supplies. If you haven’t noticed, these people are the heroes that have kept Maine running.

We must find more creative alternatives to balancing the state budget than to do it on the backs of the modest benefits we offer to vulnerable retirees who have worked on behalf of Maine and all of us.

Lois Winter

Portland

I am a retired teacher and a retired clam digger. Part of my retirement income is based on a Maine State Retirement pension and part on Social Security. (In Maine, one of about a dozen states if you have a state pension, your Social Security is reduced by 40 percent!)

I’m not complaining, I get by. But ever since former Gov. John McKernan raided the retirement fund, I’ve known that there was a major problem.

The current crisis is due to the Legislature not funding the pension fund, as required by law, over the years.

This crisis has been recently compounded by poor returns on investments. Having said all this, I support Gov. LePage’s plans in the budget re state pensions up to a point, but I am outraged by one of the details.

Retirees are asked to sacrifice by foregoing cost of living raises (and never forget the government’s stated inflation rate is bogus because it doesn’t include food or energy costs).

Most of the savings will go into that black hole called the General Fund. This is totally unacceptable and unconscionable!

I’m willing to sacrifice if those savings go into the pension fund like they should, but for nothing else.

For the long term I think that all new hires, teachers and state workers should go under Social Security and have their own private health and retirement accounts. I would be a lot better off if I had been given that option.

Pete Hope

Pemaquid

Don’t drill for oil offshore; use more alternative energy

On Jan. 11, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., reintroduced the No New Drilling Act, in accordance with the release of the final report of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The commission’s report found, among other things, that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was not an isolated incident but was indicative of a systemic problem within the oil industry.

There have been at least 13 oil spills of 50,000 gallons or more in the U.S. since 2003. Offshore drilling was flawed before the BP spill and it will always be thus unless we the people demand otherwise. In case you were wondering, much of the petroleum gleaned from our offshore drilling is consumed in other countries and not by you or me. That alone should give us pause for thought.

Additionally, gaps in our domestic supply are filled with oil acquired from other nations, many of which harbor and are directly funding people who wish to do America great harm. We are paying for oil in blood and treasure. The rational conclusion is that the safe to way drill offshore is to not drill offshore. This is not a partisan issue, but sound and reasonable policy. How do we fill the void?

Conservation of usage and dedication to the manufacture and deployment of renewable energy sources will increase national security, improve air and water quality and provide employment to an increasingly restless work force.

And for those concerned with profit margins, there is plenty there, too. For those who act, that is.

We have fallen behind the international community and delay at our peril. Call the congressional delegation today in support of the No New Drilling Act and in support of the renewables sector.

Greg Brown

Georgetown

Way too much money spent on just six districts

Regarding the letter by Kevin Perkins (“School reform can’t wait, principal says,” Jan. 25), it is so very sad to hear a principal tout a reform promoted by The Re-inventing School Coalition (RISC) that is being considered by six — count them: six — districts in Maine for which the taxpayers have paid $1,199,165.

The first $170,607 was paid for the period of February 2009 to June 2009; there was to be an administrative support tool developed. As of a couple of months ago, it was not yet finished.

The first contract with RISC states: “The overall goal of this project is to develop detailed measurement topics for all Maine Learning Results content areas at the secondary level Each measurement topic at each level will be stated in scale or rubric format including zero through four whole-point scores and half-point scores, thus constituting a 9-point scale for each topic at each level. A brief teacher guide will accompany each subject matter set of topics that will explain how to score formative assessments and track student progress so that students’ true final status on each measurement topic can be estimated as opposed to simply “averaging” scores across assessments.” (Estimating is better than averaging?)

It is all directed toward “standards-based education” where, according to RISC, “students advance based on achievement students advance through system at their own pace “

It sounds great, doesn’t it? In the 1960s this was called “individualized instruction.” It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Why is it that with every “new” idea adopted, the students’ scores go down, down, down?

We spent $1.2 million for six districts. I am still flabbergasted! Taxpayers should be outraged!

Audrey Buffington

South Thomaston

 

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