Before the dust settles on the 2008-2009 city of Lincoln budget, it’s a good time to once again bring up the specter of employee retirement benefits and how they constitute a burden on taxpayers.

In the past few years, those trying to balance the city budget have brought up the point. This year, Lincoln Independent Business Association Executive Director Coby Mach called for lowering the retirement match.

Civilian city employees (fire and police workers have their own pension plans) contribute 3 percent of the first $4,800 of their earnings, and the city contributes 6.3 percent. After that, the city contributes 12 percent for workers who put in 6 percent.

Many workers in the private sector can’t help but be green with envy looking at that deal, especially when they realize it comes at the expense of city funds direly needed to maintain services.

Private-sector plans average employer contributions of only 50 cents on the dollar.

Even Lancaster County employees don’t get such a deal: Their employer match is $1.50 on the dollar.

“We can’t find anybody where you can earn a 200 percent immediate match on your retirement,” Mach said this month. “In fact, if we reduced it to 100 percent, it would be extremely generous.”

Mayor Chris Beutler in June had called the match “out of touch” with the private sector and had proposed possibly reducing it to $1.40 per dollar.

Mach said making the match 100 percent, or dollar for dollar,  would save the city $3.3 million per year.

The Journal Star editorial board feels continued frustration at the city’s inability to change this system.

When City Council Republicans sought to reduce the match in 2006, Personnel Director Don Taute said such a reduction likely would violate the city’s contract with employees because when the state decides whether salaries are appropriate, it looks at overall compensation and benefits. Taute said at the time that such a change would have to begin with new hires and be negotiated with the city’s employee unions.

The state law that requires city governments to pay wages and benefits comparable to those in other cities rears its head again.

The Journal Star has advocated changing the system to allow more reliance on comparisons with the private sector.

The point bears repeating.

It’s no wonder public employees contribute to retirement plans at a far greater rate, nearly 75 percent, than those in the private sector, about 42 percent, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

The system needs to change.