My view has been that if the state can retroactively change its contract with its former employees, it should be able to also do that for other contracts, for example, road repair.
Dear Acme Road Repair Company, 10 years ago we paid you 5 million dollars to fix the state highway near Plainville. We now realize we paid you to much. We really could not afford to pay that amount. Please refund us one million dollars by the end of the year, or we will be forced to take legal action to seize your property and sell it. Yours truly, the State of Confusion.
Now that will never happen. What we really need is for retirement payments to be made to an individual's personally owned retirement account, controlled completely by the individual, and hopefully tax deferred or tax free. Otherwise, retirment money will always tempt politicians to be irresponsible in some way.