State leaders put public employees ahead of highways

Charleston (WV) Daily Mail ^ | February 28, 2012 | Don Surber

[Mustang Driver]

Over the weekend came the exciting news that West Virginia officials have been so diligent in their work that the state now has saved $1 billion — at least on paper.

“West Virginia is already reaping benefits from recent efforts to rein in public retiree health benefit costs, officials say: They expect to shrink the projected funding shortfall further, by more than $1 billion, and a Wall Street credit rating agency appears ready to praise the state’s handling of its last major liability,” reported Lawrence Messina of the Associated Press.

Now $1 billion might not seem like much in other places, but in West Virginia, $1 billion would be enough to build a $200 million prison and complete the replacement of the dangerous, two-lane stretch of U.S. 35 from the Buffalo Bridge to Ohio — and still have more than half of it left over for a nice tax break.

Of course, there is no $1 billion.

This is simply another exercise in creative accounting by the people at the Statehouse who brought us trading sick leave for free health insurance.

The state had a $10 billion unfunded liability for Other Post Employment Benefits, most of which is the health insurance for retired state workers.

So expensive is this benefit that the state stopped offering it to people hired after July 1, 2010.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Before they could always shift that additional road cost onto the Feds. But now that Sheets Byrd has assumed room temperature, reality is closing in.