(EKB-TV) Educators across the region have organized to oppose comments made by Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin during a radio interview on Tuesday, March 13.
Campbellsville radio station WVLC aired the interview, addressing Kentucky’s failing public pension system. In it, Gov. Bevin said teachers who oppose alterations to the pension plan were, “remarkably selfish and shortsighted.” Bevin accused teachers who oppose pension reform of being, “ignorant,” and likened the opposition to, “throwing a temper tantrum.”
Gov. Bevin later shared a link to the interview in its entirety via Twitter, saying, “If you want the truth, listen for yourself and don’t let other people mislead you.”
Kentucky teachers face uncertainty with a massive deficit in funding to support the current public pension system. Current retirees face the possibility of cuts under the administration’s proposed changes with the deepest cuts affecting future retirees in an effort to balance the severely underfunded system.
The full interview can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/bevin-hampton-administration/gov-bevin-on-wvlc-discussing-kentuckys-pension-reform
Transcribed audio from featured video:
“Teachers are the only people in Kentucky who get pay raises after they retire. They get a pay raise every year for the rest of their lives, even after they’re no longer teaching. They’re the only workers — state troopers don’t. They go out and are willing to get shot at, some of them do get killed in the line of duty. They don’t get pay raises in retirement. Highway workers don’t get pay raises in retirement. Social workers – they don’t get pay raises in retirement. The only people in Kentucky – are teachers….Could you imagine in World War II, when people said, ‘Hey, okay, we’re going to stop using butter or sugar, or we’re going to have to turn in all your extra steel or copper. We’ve got to help our troops. We’ve got to save our nation. This would be like people protesting that. This would be like people having mass demonstrations about how, ‘no, I want my butter, I want my sugar. I’m going to keep all my steel and my rubber and my copper and to heck with the rest of you people but you better keep giving me mine.’” …If they get what they wish for, they will not have a pension system for the younger people who are still working and that to me is remarkably selfish and shortsighted, but, we’re going to try to save people in spite of themselves.”
