MANCHESTER, Conn.

No wonder state Connecticut state Trooper Matthew Spina hates his job, just as he told the motorist he abused with five minutes of crazed rage during a traffic stop in New Haven two weeks ago, a tirade famously captured on cellphone video, posted on the Internet, and viewed internationally:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8338643/Connecticut-trooper-goes-rage-filled-tirade-speeding-motorist-gave-finger.html

The trooper screamed at, bullied and threatened the motorist, searched his backpack, handcuffed him, and stomped on his possessions before uncuffing him and letting him go without arresting or ticketing him for anything, since the motorist had done nothing illegal.

In the video Spina expresses contempt for the public he polices, and he rejoices that he has only 14 months to go until retirement. These remarks invite a review of his payroll records at state Comptroller Kevin Lembo's wonderful OpenCT internet site. It turns out that in at least the last five years Spina has been working so much that his overtime earnings have nearly equaled or exceeded his base annual salary of almost $100,000:

https://openpayroll.ct.gov/#!/year/2020/employee/9F1B517080F4571F5AABFA4741065909

Last year Spina made $99,000 in regular pay, $97,000 in overtime, and another $7,000 in miscellaneous pay, presumably private-duty pay, another sort of overtime, for a total of $203,000. Forty percent of Spina's earnings of $76,744 so far this year has been overtime, so he is on track for another $200,000 year -- if he can maintain some semblance of sanity, if his supervisors don't see that overwork may be impairing his fitness, and if he is not suspended or dismissed for his misconduct, which has spectacularly besmirched the state police.

Why might Spina drive himself crazy with overwork? It's probably so he can participate in the part of state government's pension system that has become a racket. The system offers troopers pensions that are payable immediately upon 20 years of service, and it calculates pension payments by taking half the average of the salaries of a trooper's three highest-earning years.

Thus Spina seems close to qualifying for an annual pension of about $100,000. The Yankee Institute for Public Policy says more than 1,600 retired state employees already enjoy pensions that large.

This is even better than it looks. For Spina seems to be only middle-aged, and achieving pension entitlement by middle age through government employment and not retiring but instead taking other employment for 15 years or so has become a hallowed and lucrative tradition in Connecticut. The pension system is often used not just for a secure retirement but also for accumulation of great wealth during a second career, long before a beneficiary stops working.

But if Spina does not complete 20 years of service as he plans to do next year, he will not qualify for a state pension until he turns 65. In that case he probably would have to keep working another 15 or 20 years in a different job.

So how will the state police department handle the Spina case?

The trooper has been transferred to desk duty while his misconduct is under investigation. Given the department's habit of concealing or minimizing misconduct by troopers, Spina may receive no serious discipline at all, or the department may delay any discipline until Spina completes the 14 months he needs for his 20-year qualification, thereby making discipline meaningless.

The bigger issue here is whether, now that state government's finances have been devastated by the virus epidemic as well as by pension obligations, and many state residents have been ruined financially, Connecticut can afford a pension system that allows its beneficiaries to use it not just for secure retirement but for a life of luxury.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.

The longer a government's finances are allowed to deteriorate, the fewer options there are when corrective action is finally taken. Anyone who doubts that ought to look at a proposed 10-year plan commissioned by Providence and produced by the federal National Resource Network (NRN). It makes a number of important recommendations, almost all of which would require very unpleasant decisions -- the kind that all too many local governments are facing after years and decades of imprudent fiscal decisions.

Providence is confronted with tremendous fiscal challenges, ones severe enough that they could lead to municipal bankruptcy. The city faces an ongoing structural budget gap, one of the drivers of which is payments needed to rescue a public employees' pension that is officially just 27.4 percent funded.

The real pension picture is even worse, because that official funding ratio is based on the wildly unrealistic assumption that fund assets will earn an annual return of 8.25 percent. And there is more than $1 billion in unfunded liability for retiree health care.

The city also has a comparatively low credit rating, which boosts the cost of borrowing. The degree to which new taxes can be relied upon to raise more revenue is limited: Providence's property taxes and its overall household tax burden are already among the highest in New England. Business taxes also are well above average.

The recommendations by NRN, a public-private consortium that is a component of the Obama administration's Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative, could serve as a template for action for just about any fiscally struggling local government. To begin with, NRN suggests monetizing city assets and using the receipts to pay down pension and retiree health-care liabilities. A city-owned golf course could be sold, and the Providence Water Supply Board, which operates the state's primary system of reservoirs, water treatment and water distribution, could be leased with a large up-front payment to the city.

NRN also calls for suspending city retirees' cost-of-living adjustments. But a more radical recommendation is to freeze the existing defined-benefit pension fund and convert to a defined-contribution plan under which the city would be responsible only for contributing a set amount, not making specific periodic payments to retirees.

Other recommendations would also affect city workers. One calls for a dramatic reduction in raises based solely on longevity; another recommends reducing the number of paid holidays that employees receive. The Fire Department is a particular area of concern, one that provides yet another reminder of the perils of making topics beyond pay and benefits subjects for collective bargaining. The department has overtime costs and minimum staffing levels that are the highest among eight comparable New England cities. NRN suggests suspending existing minimum staffing levels once overtime spending reaches a set threshold. A more dramatic recommendation is that the city look at reducing the size of its fire department.

The story of how Providence dug itself into such a deep fiscal hole is a familiar one. During the 1990s, the city spent countless millions, most of it financed with debt, developing its downtown area. Unlike so many other cities that invested heavily in their downtowns, Providence did get something for its money: It soon gained a reputation as one of the nation's hippest medium-sized cities. But amid all of the attention city leaders seemed to forget that those creditors would eventually expect to be paid back.

Downtown Providence is indeed vibrant, but now the bills are coming due and the path to solvency has become extremely narrow. Whether Providence and its residents will find the will to take that difficult path remains to be seen. If the city does rise to the challenge, it might even end up providing a map for other cities facing similar self-inflicted fiscal crises.

Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is the principal of Chieppo Strategies, LLC, a public policy writing and advocacy firm. He is also a research fellow at the Ash Center of Harvard Kennedy School, where he is contributing editor to the “Better, Faster, Cheaper” blog on Governing.com.

In 2003 to 2005, Mr. Chieppo was policy director in Massachusetts’s Executive Office for Administration and Finance, where he led the Romney administration’s successful effort to reform the commonwealth’s public-construction laws, helped develop and enact a new charter school funding formula, and worked on a variety of public-employee labor issues such as pension reform and easing state restrictions against privatization. This piece first ran on Governing.com.