Were the employees not contributing into it beforehand?
It's ultimately a sophistry to obscure a pay cut, because the employment was accepted with understood stipulations. To come back later and say, 'to get the same deal you accepted you need to pay 3% of your salary to X' is a pay cut by that amount.
I have no problem with the governor deciding to cut state payrolls, or pay rates, as the economy shrinks and tax decline. Ultimately an unsatisfied employee can go elsewhere.
Florida from a government fiscal position, seems to be in a pretty good place. One of just over a dozen states with AAA credit rating (not even the USA has that anymore, and very few countries do).
I had seen where Florida's pension system was over 100% funded during the property boom, but has fallen subsequently and last I saw was at something like 84%. I would bet even that is a rosy calculation in a world of ZIRP or NIRP.
The whole pension reform thing has been one big scam, and Scott's biggest supporters fell for it completely. Worst part of it was that pretty much every sheriff, police chief and fire chief in the State did the same thing. Their budget magically had a nice surplus late in the year (courtesy of the fact that the employees were now paying a portion of the contribution). They all looked like they were doing a great job of managing their budgets. What did they do with the surplus? Pay bonuses or provide raises, to make up for the decreased take-home pay of their staff. Long-run result - now-higher compensation to all of them, which will result in eventual higher payout requirements for the pension fund, since the payout is based on salary.
For pension payout purposes is the employee's salary calculated prior to 'paying' into the pension, or net the 'contribution'?
I'm not aware of state employees getting raises overall that put them back over the pay cut, but I imagine Sheriff's have a lot more flexibility with their own budgets when taxes are flush.
The state employee salaries are publicly posted. If someone wanted a PhD thesis on the intersection of politics/policy/accounting the numbers should be available for crunching.
The scandal you see all the time with govt. pensions is when they game the last few years with massive overtime, etc.