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MILWAUKEE COUNTY, Wis. \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\nA Milwaukee County supervisor is calling for an overhaul of the current pension system for part-time or seasonal employees. <\/p>\n
Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman said the current system is costly and ineffective. He proposed legislation to end the current system. Any changes to the program would impact several hundred part-time county employees, according to Wasserman. Some of those positions include seasonal staff like lifeguards, pool attendants and many park department workers. <\/p>\n
“Milwaukee County is almost synonymous with pension scandal. We don’t want a pension scandal in the future,” Wasserman said. <\/p>\n
OBRA, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, is the current pension system for part-time, seasonal employees. It’s been operating since 1991 and covers employees who do not qualify for the Wisconsin Retirement System or Social Security. <\/p>\n
“When I talk to colleagues, most supervisors don’t even know what OBRA is,” Wasserman said. “That’s how little known it is.”<\/p>\n
However, Wasserman said that’s just part of the problem. <\/p>\n
“These young kids never get their money,” Wasserman said. “They never have received the promise that was given to them.”<\/p>\n
A county-commissioned study found that 47% of 422 former employees eligible for payment since 2019 never got their money. Wasserman said often the seasonal, part-time employees no longer live in the county. <\/p>\n
“We actually have to send out five letters to these people,” Wasserman said. “We can’t find them, and then the money actually goes to the state of Wisconsin.” <\/p>\n
That process leads to high administrative costs. According to the county study, on average the county has incurred $194,000 a year in administrative costs for OBRA. <\/p>\n
Wasserman’s solution is to “soft close” OBRA and use Social Security for any future employees. <\/p>\n
“We want to help these young individuals, and we want to help Social Security,” Wasserman said. “We can do it all with a vote coming up, hopefully in September or October.”<\/p>\n
The phase-out process would require multiple steps, however, and Wasserman said it would take several years to complete. <\/p>\n
“What we learned from this budget amendment that I introduced last year was that it does take a while to process that we have to work with the federal government. We’re going to have to work with the state government,” Wasserman said. “We have to ask people who have OBRA right now: do they want to be switched over into the Social Security system, or do they want to stay with what they have? We’re also going to set up a date in the future that says all new employees are going to be right into Social Security. So it’s a two part, somewhat complicated system. We have to start the process. We have to, we as a county board, have to come to the policy decision that says the time has come for a change.”<\/p>\n
Wasserman believes this move would save the county money in the long run. <\/p>\n
In a statement made to WISN 12 News on Thursday, a spokesperson from County Executive David Crowley’s office said Crowley will review the proposed legislation. <\/p>\n
“County Executive Crowley will review the proposed legislation, including its fiscal impact on the county, and remains open to creative approaches that identify meaningful cost savings within the budget,” the spokesperson wrote. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milwaukee County supervisor calls for overhaul of part-time employee pension program Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman said the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1014158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,3059,389530,405794,125690,405792,19835,405795,2934,6375,405787,5535,405788,405793,6459,405785,405786,195208,7620,405796,405789,255,405790,405791,711,67,132,68,44822,238297],"class_list":["post-1014157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-county","tag-county-executive","tag-county-executive-david-crowley","tag-county-supervisor","tag-current-pension-system","tag-future","tag-high-administrative-cost","tag-legislation","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-pension","tag-milwaukee-county","tag-milwaukee-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-milwaukee-county-supervisor","tag-money","tag-obra","tag-obra-pension-system","tag-overhaul","tag-parks-department","tag-part-time-employee-pension-program","tag-part-time-worker","tag-personal-finance","tag-seasonal-workers","tag-sheldon-wasserman","tag-social-security","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wasserman","tag-wisn"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}