To PERS retirees and employees,

In August I read with concern that outgoing Gov. Barbour has established a commission to investigate PERS, our state retirement.

As a retiree that gave 43 years of my life to our community, I believe this gives me the right to speak.

I heard and saw this commission on the news Sept. 7. It is made up of business people, politicians, etc.

This is another attempt for the politicians to get their hands on the billions of dollars in PERS retirement account. Politicians have been trying for years to get their hands on this money. If they are successful, within six months they will be using our retirement money for other programs such as welfare, food stamps, etc.

Think about it. Every program managed by government officials is broke or going broke — Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. Our federal debt is trillions of dollars in the red.

Our city governments have problems “finding the money” to pay our fire and police officers, the people who protect our lives and property.

Some 40 years ago municipal retirement was managed by a group of cities. Money was “borrowed” from the retirement system and used for other programs.

After getting our retirement in the red by poor management, PERS was asked to take over management of this system.

PERS agreed to do this and has managed the municipal retirement along with our state retirement successfully without problems.

I have heard that when we fight success we lose.

Why in the world would we want to change from successful management (PERS) to unsuccessful management (politicians)? I do not want to change.

I ask each retiree to contact their elected officials and let them know we want our retirement system to remain in the hands of PERS.

Jerry McDaniel

Natchez citizen