Sharing in the sacrifice

State workers will take it on the chin Friday, when the new fiscal year begins for Nevada governments. The 2011-13 budget passed by the Legislature and approved by Gov. Brian Sandoval cuts their pay 2.5 percent, increases their health care and pension obligations and forces them to take six unpaid furlough days each year, the equivalent of an additional 2.3 percent salary reduction.

But they can take heart that things could be much, much worse.

They could work in the private sector.

That’s because veteran public employees have an income option that’s a faraway dream for most taxpayers: retirement.

As of last week, 584 of the state’s more than 15,000 workers had retired during the fiscal year that ends Thursday, the Review-Journal’s Ed Vogel reported. More than 1,600 workers (not including public schoolteachers) are eligible to receive annual pension payments equal to 75 percent of their average pay for their three highest-salaried years. If they don’t want to deal with the indignity of reduced income and an increased workload — the status quo for battered businesses — they can immediately start collecting a little less income without working at all.

Tens of thousands of Nevadans are unemployed or underemployed, relying on government assistance and savings — if they had any. A large share of the hundreds of thousands of people fortunate enough to have jobs face certain long-term joblessness if they lose their current positions.

But retirement? Not when every paycheck is stretched to its limit and employers are cutting back or eliminating matching contributions to 401(k) accounts.

Public employee pensions remain one of the greatest disconnects between the government and private-sector work forces. Millions of people work more than 50 years without being able to retire comfortably, yet most government workers can call it quits and cash in after as few as 20 years of work.

When you consider that Nevada’s pension fund is billions of dollars in the hole, and that taxpayers will be expected to cover that unfunded liability in the years ahead, the plight of public employees becomes even less sympathetic.

We wish times were better. However, financial hardship and sacrifice are as mainstream today as tattoos and energy drinks. State employees who feel picked on, unappreciated and overworked might have a different outlook if they tried finding work outside government.

That so many of them don’t is telling.