Pennsylvanians reacted with appropriate outrage over the July 2005 pay raise that lawmakers awarded themselves — with a 2 a.m. vote preceded by no debate and no public discussion. The voter anger threatened legislators' re-election, and the pay raise was repealed late last year.

Self-awarded pay raises ranging from 15 percent to 35 percent — with a minimum pay boost of $11,000 a year — shocked most Pennsylvanians, who can neither vote themselves a pay raise, nor expect to see an $11,000 raise in a single year.

Still, for many, the July 2005 pay-raise vote was more about the secretive, constitution-defying process than the actual money.

A much more costly legislative action went largely unnoticed — or unprotested — in Harrisburg a few years earlier, when lawmakers decided to give themselves, teachers and other state employees generous pension increases.

The 2005 pay-raise vote involved millions of dollars. The 2001 pension grab will cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

At the time of the bill's passage, it did not receive much public scrutiny. Recently, however, that legislative action has been looming as a financial time bomb facing the state's school boards — and property-tax payers.

The 2001 Harrisburg pension grab could not have happened at a worse time. The stock market had been booming through the 1990s, which resulted in large investment gains that minimized, or even negated, the normal annual contributions to the investment funds. Soon after the pension grab was passed, the stock market collapsed and investment returns have been well below 1990s gains or marginally positive since that time.

Rather than allow the accumulated portfolio gains of the 1990s to remain and leave a cushion against future stock market declines, the legislature decided to grab the accumulated surplus and give themselves a 50 percent pension boost and other state employees a lesser, but still-generous increase.

In their greedy and shortsighted pension grab, lawmakers offered assurances that the increase would not cost taxpayers an additional penny. Lawmakers touted optimistic actuarial projections, and apparently believed the stock market boom would go on forever. They were wrong, and taxpayers will soon be paying the price.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) notes that lawmakers in 11 states boosted their pensions in 2001, by raising the so-called multiplier or the percentage of their final average salary a retiree receives for each year of service. The NCSL also noted "The increases tended to be relatively small except in Pennsylvania. . . ."

Once again, Pennsylvania lawmakers distinguished themselves — not for constructive public policy or sound fiscal management, but for self-serving actions and greed.

The same activists who pushed for repeal of the pay raise and filed lawsuits claiming the pay raise and associated use of "unvouchered expenses" were unconstitutional, should look at the 2001 pension grab.

If state lawmakers were true to form in 2001 and failed to give the bill three days of public consideration in both the House and the Senate, the pension law could be found illegal by the courts. If the wording of the pension bill was stealthily changed in a significant way so that it's original intent was not reflected the final version, the pension grab could be found unconstitutional.

Voters can be forgiven for not picking up on the impact of the pension boost. It involved what appeared to be relatively minor changes to a small percentage, and complicated formulas involving average pay levels and years of service. The impact of the pay-raise vote, with the simple $11,000 minimum raise, was easier to comprehend.

But the actual price to taxpayers will be much greater with the pension grab. Though it might be a long-shot, the legality of that legislative action should be challenged.

Even it was not illegal, it certainly was ill-advised. And school districts and their taxpayers will soon see why.

— J.L.W.III