PROVIDENCE — Public employees packed a State House hearing on Friday in an eleventh-hour effort to head off pension cutbacks, with Patricia Hines asking on behalf of school principals across the state: “What message does this send about how Rhode Island values education … if veteran educators, who devote their entire careers to educating R.I. youth, will have to worry about how they will get by in their elder years.”

Without guaranteed annual cost-of-living increases, these schools principals — along with every other new state retiree — “would find their standard of living lowered year by year,” she told a panel of lawmakers.

The message was repeated many times during an unusual hearing at which there was no specific proposal on the table, but lots of suggestions from public employees and their union leaders on what the state could and should do in lieu of cutting benefits and raising the retirement age to 65 to cut the ballooning cost of Rhode Island’s public employee pensions by as much as $91 million next year to avoid what has been described as a looming crisis.

The alternatives include raising the threshold for collecting a pension to age 65 and either eliminating or reducing the guaranteed 3-percent, annual compounded COLAs still available at retirement to longtime employees. An earlier pension reform effort tied the COLAS promised to new employees, when they eventually retire, to 3 percent or the consumer price index or whichever is lower.

As alternatives to all of these moves, union leaders suggested re-amortizing the state’s pension debt, which would be the equivalent of refinancing a mortgage to stretch it out over a longer period of time. You might pay less now, but more over time in interest.

State Treasurer Frank Caprio has projected a potential $20 million to $30 million in annual savings, but indicated he would only support such a move “in conjunction with material changes to the pension system,” and House Finance Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, is cool to the idea.

Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers & Health Professionals, said she “normally would not advocate” a tax hike, but given the alternative — “lives forever changed” as a result of potential changes in employee pension benefits — lawmakers should look at extending the reach of the state’s narrow 7 percent sales tax so the responsibility for plugging the state’s budget hole falls on everybody.

Others who testified suggested repealing an alternative income-tax option that benefits the state’s wealthiest taxpayers at an estimated cost of $34.6 million in lost state revenue next year; $50.2 million the year after that.

Though the contribution rates paid by state workers and teachers are already among the highest in the nation, Department of Environmental Management employee Joe Antonio said some workers have indicated they would be willing to pay more if that would stave off dramatic cutbacks. Another speaker suggested government shutdown days.

“We do want to work and have worked with you … because we are all taxpayers, too,” said J. Michael Downey, president of Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. But he said, his union also wants its employees “to retire in a dignified compassionate manner,” and beyond a discussion of benefit changes for new employees, “our pensions are something we can’t give any more on.”

The hearing began with House fiscal advisor Michael O’Keefe and the chairman of a House pension-study commission, Rep. Timothy Williamson, D-West Warwick, summarizing the “pension-reform” proposals that have emerged so far from Republican Governor Carcieri, the study commission empaneled by Democratic House Speaker William J. Murphy and a series of what-if’s posed to the state’s actuarial consultants by legislative leaders.

The largest potential savings — $91 million — would result from the package approved by the Williamson-chaired study commission on March 12.

More extreme in some ways than the governor’s proposal, it would make age 65 the new minimum to collect a pension, use a worker’s five-year salary average — instead of a three-year average — to determine the size of a retiree’s pension, and tweak the COLA so it is no longer compounded year after year. For new employees the changes would be more dramatic: a shift to a new pension offering that mingles a much reduced defined-benefit plan with a government-style 401(k).

The governor is seeking to make age 59 the new minimum retirement age for all workers not yet eligible to retire as of whatever date the proposal takes effect for future retirees, while eliminating the COLAs. Projected savings: $76 million.

Longtime employeees can retire today at any age, after 28 years of work, so both would represent a big change in expectations.

As the House Finance Committee hearing was under way, the lawmakers made public a chart that reflected what might happen if the retirement age was different for every employee, depending on how many years they were away from retirement. If, for example, an employee was on track to reach the 28-year mark at age 53 — and age 65 was the new standard — the 12 years remaining would be plugged into a formula that would allow that worker to retire at age 53.4 instead.

In her turn at the microphone, Reback acknowledged she couldn’t follow the explanation “and if I can’t explain it, my members aren’t going to understand it.”

kgregg@projo.com