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September 12, 2011
From the End of the Pension Study Commission, On To???
Carroll Andrew Morse
Ted Nesi of WPRI-TV (CBS 12) has a review of today's final meeting of "the Chafee-Raimondo pension advisory group", which doubles as a preview for the General Assembly's upcoming session that is supposed to meaningfully tackle the states' pension issue. One theme that seems to be emerging is that reamortization is being considered, in conjunction with some other reforms...
- One of Newton’s slides offered a menu of six options for dealing with the pension funding issue, with varying mixes of reamortizations, COLA freezes, state taxpayer contributions, and transitions to partial 401k-style plans. They’d get the state to 80% funding between 2024 and 2029 at a total cost to state taxpayers of $3.94 billion to $4.99 billion depending on which options are chosen.
- Even the cheapest options laid out by actuary Newton aren’t cheap. One alternative he set up gets to 80% funding by 2024 at a 25-year cost to taxpayers of $3.94 billion; another gets there by 2029 at a 25-year cost of $4.99 billion. Reamortization hawks pointed to that as evidence for why further delay in shoring up the fund is so costly, but supporters said the annual contribution has to be affordable to taxpayers.
8:30 PM
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"They’d get the state to 80% funding between 2024 and 2029 at a total cost to state taxpayers of $3.94 billion to $4.99 billion depending on which options are chosen."
Enjoy, RI taxpayers. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it except moving to another state.
What are you waiting for, a Hallmark invitation?
Posted by: Dan at September 12, 2011 9:01 PM" One theme that seems to be emerging is that reamortization is being considered"
I am not quickly finding the details but apparently the pension system has already been reamortized.
How many more times must we go back to zero and how many billions more must we pay before it becomes clear that the pension system as it was set up is utterly unaffordable?
Posted by: Monique at September 12, 2011 10:06 PMDoes anyone have an educated guess as to how altering judges pensions will effect the selection process? Wasn't the pension one of the more attractive benefits of becoming a judge? Will we end up with all political hacks or about the same? I know it's a sore spot with the unions but like Nesi said, its a miniscule part of the problem.
Posted by: Max Diesel at September 13, 2011 6:39 AMJust let it crash. Save us tax payers 4.99 billion.
Posted by: Ace at September 13, 2011 7:09 AMAny plan the state comes up with is just a bandaid.
And if thay put this so called fix to the tax payers
to pay. I leave the state, I can not live with a smaller paycheck any more.
Your conclusion is correct, Max.
It probably wasn't fair that judges originally contributed nothing towards their pension and certainly their pensions should not be excluded from the fix. However, as judges comprise a tiny percentage of retirees, an adjustment to their retirement would fix only a tiny part of the pension problem.
Posted by: Monique at September 13, 2011 2:16 PMOne thing I wonder about is how altering the COLAs would change the target's landing date and cost.
A strict 3% COLA is too generous, and no COLAs run the risk of being inflated away, shouldn't all COLAs be indexed to the CPI or something?
Posted by: mangeek at September 15, 2011 12:41 PM