After 940 days since he embarked on what has proven so far to be an unsuccessful pension reform crusade, Barry Shutt is seriously thinking about calling it quits.
The retired state employee-turned-citizen activist had hoped that the digital electronic clock tabulating the public pension debt he keeps on display in the state Capitol's East Wing Rotunda would be a visual reminder that would jar lawmakers into action.
It hasn't worked.
On Monday, his clock showed the combined unfunded liability of the state's two major pension systems topping $75 billion - and growing $172 by the second.
Shutt, 69, of Lower Paxton Township, met last week with House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Jefferson County, to discuss the issue that brings him to the Capitol on most days to talk to anyone who approaches him about what his clock represents. That meeting with Reed, in his view, was so unproductive that he said his only regret coming out of it was not asking Reed if his caucus wanted to buy the $1,000 pension clock.
A request to speak with Reed on Monday about that meeting through his spokesman Steve Miskin was unfulfilled.
Shutt said his three grandchildren Madison, Haden and Evan are the inspiration for his advocacy. He tries to appeal to lawmakers to think of their own children and grandchildren who will be saddled with this pension debt if no action is taken.
"I've come to the conclusion there isn't the political will in here to cut anything sufficiently to deal with the pension so if you're not willing to cut, then the only alternative is revenue," he said.
But lawmakers have confided in him they are reluctant to raise taxes for fear it might hurt their re-election bid, Shutt said.
Pension experts he consults with tell him the pension funds will go broke in 12 years if nothing is done before then.
"When that happens because the state can't go bankrupt, the number one priority of every year's state budget will be paying retirees their benefits," Shutt said. "That could take up to 40 to 45 percent of the state budget every year. Imagine the tax increase you're going to need or spending cuts you are going to have to make in order to come with what they call a balanced budget then."
Shutt, who retired from his job as director of the state Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Food Distribution in 2007, was among those state employees who was a beneficiary of a 2001 retroactive pension enhancements. He admits he gave it little thought at the time when he signed the paper to accept the enhancement about the possible impact it could have on the pension systems partly because he was told the pension funds were fully funded.
Then he began reading about how unsustainable the enhancements had made the systems along with the two economic downturns that came a few years later. His wife Vaughn, also a state employee who left her job in 1993 on disability, pushed him to take on an advocacy role to try to get something done about the issue.
On Sept. 14, 2014, he began his crusade. He parked himself in a folding chair at the corner of Front and Maclay streets in Harrisburg outside the Governor's Residence with a sign that stated: "Pension Reform? Roll it back."
He chose that location to get the passersby's attention as well as then-Gov. Tom Corbett, who at the time was pushing his own plan for attacking the pension problem. He got noticed.
Former first lady Susan Corbett came out to pay him a visit one day to talk about her husband's plan for addressing the issue. Motorists who he figured to be state employees would make lewd gestures at him while "guys carrying tools and working outside would blow their horns in support," Shutt said.
He later moved his reform fight to the front steps of the state Capitol, then inside the Capitol Rotunda, until finally finding a home by the entrance to the East Wing cafeteria where his clock and often he have become a fixture on most weekdays.
Passersby offer a quick glance or stop and stare at the constantly changing face of his debt clock. Some even drop money in a container that Shutt plans to turn over to the governor to help address the pension debt.
"Every time I walk by here, I look at that number," said Sen. Mike Regan, R-York County, on Monday waiting near the clock for some elementary classes to arrive for their visit to the Capitol. "It's scary. It's the thing that is driving so many other things and keeps getting neglected."
Regan, who was dismayed that the governor failed to even mention the pension issue in his February budget address, said if given the chance to vote on another pension reform plan, he will be an enthusiastic "yes".
Also momentarily standing nearby the spot occupied by Shutt and his clock on Monday was Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. Barr said he applauds Shutt for shining a spotlight on what he terms as Pennsylvania's biggest fiscal crisis.
"Anything that draws attention to how negative this impacts the commonwealth's fiscal picture and individual taxpayer is important," Barr said.
Spokespeople for the House and Senate Republicans say work is being done on a pension reform plan. Miskin said the hybrid pension plan that was the product of a House-Senate conference committee that failed to garner the support to pass in the last legislative session was used as the starting point for this latest iteration of a reform proposal.
Additionally, Miskin said the House Republican-crafted $31.5 billion budget for 2017-18 that passed the chamber last week includes some funding to begin paying down the pension debt for the first time.
But that still falls well short of the significant sustained effort that Shutt considers necessary to erase the pension debt. The early-out retirement program that Wolf is proposing to cut the cost of operating state government next year won't help matters either, Shutt said.
It's all of those things together that has him thinking that aside from bringing awareness to the issue, his efforts have been in vain.
Until meeting with Reed, he had been thinking about continuing his crusade through the 2018 gubernatorial election cycle because he thought that would be entertaining. He still might do that, he said.
Another thing that keeps him coming back to the Capitol is a friendship formed over the pension issue with Rep. John McGinnis, R-Blair County, who Shutt said asked him to stick it out until he wraps up his legislative career at the end of the 2017-18 legislative session. McGinnis doesn't remember making that request but admits that he and Shutt share the same frustration about the Legislature's unwillingness to get serious about tackling the pension debt.
Then again, McGinnis said, "I think sometimes we forget we are doing something good even if it's nothing more than being a conscience and telling people that you have to face up to this debt."
Both support the idea of raising taxes to generate an additional $2 billion annually for 20 years through sunsetted tax increases to get the retirement systems fully-funded again. Shutt also thinks the $250 million in slots proceeds that now goes to support the horse racing industry would be better spent paying down the pension debt.
He also thinks it would be worth the likely legal challenge to roll back the retroactive portion of the 2001 benefit enhancement on the basis that neither employees or employers paid in money for the extra benefit therefore it wasn't earned.
He has shared his pension reform solutions with the more than 80 lawmakers and countless others who stop by to talk with him but he is feeling like talking to a brick wall would have done about as much good.
So after more than three years of advocating to fix a problem to avoid passing it on to future generations, Shutt said on Monday he thinks his time would be better spent on the golf course instead of sitting by his pension clock at the Capitol as the seconds and dollars roll by.
But what will become of that visual reminder of the rapidly growing pension debt? He said, "We may put this over in the museum or something and plug it in and leave it go because they aren't going to fix it. Put it by the dinosaur."