Two-thirds of school employees hired since Feb. 1, 2018, have chosen to enroll in a 401(k) account with substantial employer contributions rather than a traditional defined benefit pension with greater employee cost-sharing provisions. The either-or option was part of an overhaul to the school retirement system that lawmakers enacted in 2017. Among other things, the reform made the 401(k) defined contribution option the default pick for new employees.

When the new system was adopted, pension officials and fiscal analysts acknowledged they could not predict how many new employees would choose either option. If a high number of higher-paid school employees choose the traditional defined benefit option, it could have an impact on the system’s future “cash flow and liquidity needs,” the state Office of Retirement Services said at the time.

So far, there have been 8,546 new members of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System since Feb. 1, 2017. According to the state retirement office, 67 percent of them have picked the defined contribution 401(k) plan over the defined benefit option that provides an annual pension.

According to a 2014 report cited in a 2017 Michigan Captitol Confidential story, 56.6 percent of school employees who enrolled in the defined benefit pension option do not collect a pension, because they do not put in the 10 years of service required to vest in the system. This vesting requirement remains in the new system.

Even if the revised defined benefit option does create cash-flow problems, however, increased employee burden-sharing provisions make it unlikely that the result will be the very large unfunded liabilities that characterized the previous system. That underfunding was the product of politicians and state officials chronically failing to make adequate deposits. The resulting debt exceeded $29 billion when the new system was adopted, and it provided the rationale for making the change.

For seven consecutive years, from 2010 to 2016, officials had failed to contribute the full amount to the pension fund that accounting rules required in order to catch up on past failures to adequately fund the system.

The costs incurred by those failures have devastated school budgets. For example, the Dearborn Public Schools paid $41.2 million to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System in 2018, or $25.1 million more than its 2009 contribution of $16.1 million. To put that in perspective, if the 2018 costs had been the same as they were in 2009, the one-year savings would have been enough to give each of the district’s 1,508 teachers a $16,600 bonus last year.

Newly sworn-in U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, sparked an international controversy when she used an obscenity when referring to President Donald Trump and her goal of impeaching him.

Dozens of media sites wrote about Tlaib’s comment, including CNN and the BBC.

But Tlaib’s remarks in a Jan. 1 Detroit News commentary should be even more troubling to Michigan taxpayers, because in it she discussed a bipartisan practice - which she approved - that continues to cost them money.

Tlaib described taxpayer-funded subsidies given to wealthy corporations such as General Motors as a “power grab” that was “enabled by politicians who didn’t want to listen to the people hurt by their actions.”

But Tlaib’s words would have more weight if not for her own voting record on special favors for corporations when she was a member of the Michigan House of Representatives from 2009 through 2014.

Tlaib served three terms in the state House from 2009 to 2014. During those years, she cast eight votes authorizing state taxpayer-funded subsidies to corporations and developers, voting “yes” in each instance. Altogether, she voted to authorize transferring $1.031 billion in state tax money to politically favored businesses, with much of the money coming from individuals and small businesses.

In her newspaper commentary, Tlaib said the “we cannot continue to subsidize their [corporations’] greed with taxpayer dollars and get nothing in return.”

Yet rather than trying to shut down the wealth transfers, as a state representative, Tlaib took every opportunity that came before her to authorize more of them.

Here’s what Michigan Capitol Confidential reported last month on Tlaib’s history of supporting “corporate greed”:

Among the bills Tlaib approved was one authorizing a $253 million subsidy for electric car battery makers. Another one was for $228 million for a state “21st Century Jobs Fund,” which writes subsidy checks to scores of private businesses.

Here is a list of the bills, with the amount authorized by each:

$100,000,000. Senate Bill 777. Subsidize battery scheme in former Wixom auto plant. House Roll Call 469 on Sept. 10, 2009.

$253,000,000. House Bill 5469. Give subsidies to electric car battery makers. House Roll Call 676 on Dec. 17, 2009.

$365,000,000. Give subsidies to electric car battery makers. House Roll Call 96 on March 26, 2009. Senate Roll Call 83 on March 11, 2009.

$9,500,000. Senate Bill 619. Tourism industry marketing subsidies. House Roll Call 122 on March 3, 2010.

$24,000,000. Senate Bill 944. Subsidize developers’ ‘historic’ building rehabs. House Roll Call 555 on Dec. 3, 2009.

$50,000,000. Senate Bill 855. Subsidize electric car battery maker in former Wixom auto plant. House Roll Call 613 on Dec. 8, 2011.

$2,400,000. House Bill 5732. Make subsidies for developers saleable to others. House Roll Call 680 on June 12, 2012.

$228,000,000. Senate Bill 269. Authorize an extension to the ‘21st Century Jobs Fund’ for various business subsidies and other favors. House Roll Call 719 on Dec. 18, 2014.

Note: On Dec. 20, 2018, the Michigan House approved and sent to the governor a bill to again extend this last program for another four years and $300 million. The bill is now Public Act 577 of 2018. Tlaib’s last term in the Legislature ended in 2014.