2025 Regular Session - Day 29 - HB 694 Veto Override Vote Explanation, Rep. Gooch

Thank you Mr. Speaker. I'd like to attempt to explain my vote but I can assure you that two minutes is not enough time when you're trying to talk about the very complex situations that arise with a defined benefit pension plan. You know and I hear a lot of people talk about broken promises. Well I can tell you one thing, no matter who you are if you're on the state defined benefit pension plan, you were told that if you work this many years and you work and you make this much money, your retirement is going to be this amount of money. In that type of situation, in that type of plan, 100% of the benefit, 100% of the responsibility is on the pension itself which is the taxpayer. We've never gone to you and said okay we're going to cut your retirement benefits in the future. We've never said to them we're going to, you got to pay more even though you're making more money and your pension is going to be based on more money. There weren't enough people into the, they were paying into the plan that we thought there were. The investments didn't make the amount that we thought they were but in every situation in that particular plan, the real burden of providing those benefits lies with the state and everybody just needs to understand that when they complain about promises that have not been kept.