01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 25, 2004

DID YOU HEAR the latest news from the Rhode Island state pension adviser? Taxpayers should pay a whopping $121 million more next year toward the pensions of state employees and public-school teachers.

So, while James P. Hosey conjures up ridiculously outdated images of men being hanged from lamp posts while fighting for union protection ("Compare CEO benefits with teachers'," Commentary, Aug. 13), working people and retirees of Rhode Island -- thanks to outrageous public-sector-union contract terms -- will probably have to find $121 million of additional monies from their already overtaxed family budgets.

Yet labor leaders recently opposed the only serious pension-plan reforms, including setting a minimum retirement age and tying increases to the consumer-price index. Remember that the next time they try to convince you that they care about working people and retirees.

In his piece, Mr. Hosey claims that there are no annual salary increases up to 12 percent for teachers and no automatic increases. He is simply wrong.

We frequently hear of roughly 3-percent annual salary increases for teachers. But that is very misleading. That's because most school districts have 10 job steps, and teachers move up the ladder.

It is true that a step-5 salary in 2003-04 will be roughly 3 percent higher than that step-5 salary the year before. But that is relevant to taxpayers only when a step-5 teacher leaves and another step-5 teacher takes his or her place -- an infrequent occurrence.

What more typically happens -- but is not discussed publicly -- is that every continuing teacher, up to step 10, automatically moves up one step per year, yielding huge salary increases, written into contracts and all but hidden from the public.

Here are two examples from East Greenwich for the year from 2002-03 to 2003-04:

-- A new teacher's aide step-1 salary, of $31,050, became a step-2 salary, of $34,927 -- a 12.5-percent increase.

-- A beginning teacher's step-5 salary, of $41,921, became a step-6 salary, of $46,210 -- a 10.2-percent increase.

Unfortunately, these high salary increases are not just a one-year development. Here are the two examples from East Greenwich for the five years from 1998-99 to 2003-04:

-- A new teacher's aide step-1 salary, of $24,376, in 1998-99 became a step-5 salary, of $43,389, in 2003-04 -- a 78-percent total increase over five years, or an increase of 12.2 percent per year.

-- A beginning teacher's step-5 salary, of $33,877, in 1998-99 became a step-9 salary, of $55,482, in 2003-04 -- a 65-percent total increase over 5 years, or an increase of 10.5 percent per year.

These data are irrefutable facts. And the extremely high rate of salary increases locks in a higher salary structure for all future years, including pension-benefit liabilities.

But don't take my word for it. Ask your school officials for comparable 1-year and 5-year job-step salary data for your community.

Worse, these automatic step increases are awarded only for showing up, not for individual merit. The worst teacher gets the same increase as the best teacher. Is that fair to the great teachers who are so important to our children? Does that create an incentive for excellence?

Salary increases as high as 12 percent, zero health-insurance co-payments, and a rich pension program have created financially unsustainable compensation costs. To suggest otherwise is pure economic fiction.

The situation in Rhode Island is not complicated to grasp.

Most Rhode Island taxpayers do not get annual salary increases of up to 12 percent just for showing up. But many teachers do, and the taxpayers pay for it.

Most Ocean State taxpayers don't have zero co-payments on their health-insurance premiums. But the teachers often do, and the taxpayers pay for it.

Most Rhose Island taxpayers don't have a pension plan that allows them to retire as early as in their 50s and immediately receive 60 percent of their final salary for the rest of their life. But the teachers do, and the taxpayers pay for it.

Cut through their melodramatic hyperbole by remembering that specific contract terms are the dirty little secret that the unions, politicians, and bureaucrats do not want publicly discussed. The rest of us have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from the public disclosure of union-contract economics.

Test who is truly willing to engage in an open, public debate of the facts. Here's how:

-- Demand that your community and school officials post all public-sector union contracts on their Web sites, so that the facts are transparently obvious.

-- Hold political candidates accountable for knowing and publicly discussing the terms of those contracts. They should say, on the record, whether such terms are acceptable.

-- Vote for candidates -- regardless of party -- who are responsive. Throw out those who are not.

This is not simply a rhetorical debate about esoteric contract terms. We ignore the fundamental laws of economics at our peril. Working families and retirees eventually pay for every excessive contract.

The unrelenting burden of outrageous public-sector-union contracts reduces everyone's standard of living in Rhode Island without improving the mediocre quality of our public services.

We cannot afford the status quo, financially or morally.

Donald B. Hawthorne is a former member of the East Greenwich School Committee.