This is a letter to the editor that was published Monday, Dec. 3, in The Garden Island, which headlined it, “Pension problem needs solving.”
Your recent guest column, “Don’t begrudge pensions for public employees,” (TGI, Nov. 27) misrepresented the position of groups like the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii as an attack on local and state government employees.
In reality, we are trying to save their pension program before it goes bankrupt and they end up with nothing. Certainly our public employees deserve to be compensated fairly for their civil service. It’s precisely for that reason that we want to ensure there are benefits for them to receive. Resolving Hawaii’s public pension crisis will help our government employees, not harm them.
Our other goal is to spare Hawaii taxpayers from paying through the nose to rescue the system before it collapses.
As an independent, nonpartisan public policy think tank that is funded mostly by private individuals, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is dedicated to finding solutions that work for all Hawaii.
Joshua Mason, director of communications, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
