A retired state worker takes exception to my pointing out that Maryland's spending and liabilities for health-care coverage for retired employees are growing at an unsustainable rate. To cover future retiree medical costs Maryland needs to immediately start appropriating $600 million a year -- as much as will be raised by slot machines if they ever arrive. Liabilities have hit $16 billion and are growing by a billion dollars or so every two years. As in so many other areas of government, we're spending way over our budget. The retiree wants to keep these benefits because they are "hard earned." I'm sure state employees worked hard for these benefits. But the benefits are costing far beyond what either the state or the employees have contributed. What should be done? Here's the note from the retiree:

Here you go again. First you slam AARP, now you're hitting on State Retirees. I am one of those people. When I retired in 2001 from State Service with 36 years, I was promised, on my last day of work, the benefits I now receive for a life without frills. Pick on the real culprits of this problem....drug and health companies with their creamy salaries and profits. The Blue Ribbon Committee you mentioned are waiting for your Republican Congress to let a health bill pass before they act. That seems reasonable. You should know that the delegates that I've communicated with feel that the solution should NOT be on the backs of retired folks, not even current workers, but on new-hires in the future. At least that's what Delegate Lafferty told me in his phone town-meeting a couple weeks ago. Leave us alone. Do you have parents or grandparents on a pension and you want them to lose any part of their hard-earned benefits !??! No way...Shame on you, Jay.

He has a long memory. I slammed AARP three years ago, when I turned 50 and they started stalking me with junk mail.