In the 11th hour of their legislative session, Colorado lawmakers last week passed a compromise deal to change the state’s underfunded pension system for teachers and other public employees.
The final version of the bill, which the governor was expected to sign, would increase employees’ contributions to the retirement fund, raise the minimum retirement age for new teachers from 58 to 64, calculate retired employees’ earnings from five years of their highest average pay—up from three—and reduce the cost-of-living adjustment from 2 percent to 1.5 percent. Retirees would also lose cost-of-living raises for two years.
Teachers had protested at the state capitol weeks earlier against proposed changes to their retirement benefits. Some of the changes that teachers most disliked didn’t make it to the final version of the bill.
