Wow.
The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds tracks pension fund contributions. Before 2011, the vast majority of government employees in Wisconsin did not contribute towards their pension. Since Act 10 was implemented, state, local, university, tech college, and school district government employees have contributed $9 billion to their own pensions.
That’s $9 billion in taxpayer savings over ten years – just for the pension piece alone.
Tracking health insurance savings throughout the state is more complicated. There are thousands of local units of government and some Act 10 savings at the local level go unnoticed and unpublicized. Act 10 permanently changed the trajectory of those local healthcare costs. Local governments like the City and County of Milwaukee include that information in their annual budgets – and the savings continue to grow exponentially.
Using the same methodology that has always been used and the same public data sources, our new analysis shows that local governments have saved $2.4 billion, the state and university system have saved $1.2 billion, and school districts have saved $1.3 billion over the past nine years on health insurance.
That puts the total Act 10 taxpayer savings at $13.9 billion over nine years. $13.9 billion. Let that sink in for a second.