Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter made the correct choice when she ruled last week that a jury should decide on the legality of a number of changes made to state employee pension plans.
The issues have been in the news for quite some time, but the biggest (and most recent) of the changes, and the one that has garnered the most attention, is the radical restructuring of the employee pension and retirement plan pushed for by Gov.-elect Gina M. Raimondo soon after she became the state’s general treasurer in 2011.
Ms. Raimondo effectively argued that the state was on an unsustainable path, with pension obligations scheduled to become a larger and larger part of every year’s budget, until there would be little money left for Rhode Island to conduct its business.
The issue of who should decide the case was not insignificant. Ms. Taft-Carter has a number of close relatives, from her son, to her mother to an uncle, who are either collecting or will collect a public pension, although in Rhode Island, such a tangle of conflicts of interest is not an unusual circumstance.
The bigger issue that Ms. Taft-Carter’s decision solves is making sure that the state’s taxpayers have a voice in the proceeding. A jury brings a much-needed perspective to the case.
In addition, by doing so, she provides added incentive for the parties to go back to the table and negotiate a settlement, one that hopefully will not be rejected by a small minority of the unions and will allow the reforms to be put in place, something the state desperately needs. •