Legislative panel says 'yes' to boosting state pensions for retired workers

A Florida House panel Thursday unanimously OK'd a proposal to boost the pensions of roughly a million state workers and retirees with an annual cost-of-living increase of 3%. 

A pension cost-of-living increase, or COLA, was eliminated in 2011 during the Great Recession. 

Members of the House Government Operations Subcommittee were unfazed by the measure's estimated $2 billion price tag, saying it's the cost of the Legislature keeping its word. 

That lawmakers barely paused at the cost, and the warm reception the committee gave to the bill (HB 151) by Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera, R-Miami-Dade, led one labor lobbyist to tell lawmakers he had little to say “because good things apparently happen when I shut up.”