Free Republic

The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has won the unfortunate award for "First Pension to Officially Run Out of Money." According to the New York Daily News, and a host of angry former truck drivers who've had their pension benefits slashed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has officially been forced to step in and take over payments to retirees of the Local 707, albeit at a much lower rate. Teamsters Local 707’s pension fund is the first to officially bottom out financially — which happened this month. “I had a union job for 30 years,”...

Colorado’s pension plan is on track to be fully funded by 2055 — 14 years after the 2041 target date set by the Colorado Legislature in 2010. Now, lawmakers will need to decide if they want to stick to the 2041 target date, or agree that it will take longer than they planned for the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association to have the money to pay for the promised benefits to PERA’s 529,000. The probability of the financial projections, as well as other variables, were discussed today with members of the Colorado Legislative Audit Committee, who heard the results of...

A savior or a sell-out? A compromise or compromised? -snip- “HE DOESN’T GIVE a s—- what people think,” a Republican “close” to Chris Christie told Politico after the governor denounced the Republican House and Speaker Boehner (yes, by name) for voting down a pork-laden aid bill in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. We pretty much knew Christie felt that way, though it was good to see it confirmed in writing. The bigger question, one that should concern Christie, is what people think about him. We know he’s home safe in New Jersey, cruising toward re-election this November as he enjoys...

Reducing employees by more than three quarters in three years is a bold and difficult task. What will it leave behind? Who, under this plan, will still be a US IBM employee in 2015? Top management will remain, the sales organization will endure, as will employees working on US government contracts that require workers to be US citizens. Everyone else will be gone. Everyone.

The Illinois Teachers' Retirement System — the worst-funded major pension plan in the U.S. — is pumping more of its assets into higher-risk investments while using accounting methods that some pension experts say understate its funding shortfall. Springfield-based TRS, the state's largest pension provider, plans to allocate about a third of its $37.8-billion portfolio to alternative investments such as private-equity and hedge funds, a four-month Crain's investigation of TRS holdings and practices finds. These unconventional assets typically dangle the potential for higher returns, but only because they also carry greater risks and fees... Gunning for bigger returns exposes the plan...

Taxpayers would be on the hook for increasing their contribution to the state employees' pension fund by $600 million a year — at a time when the state budget is $19 billion in the red — under a recommendation approved Tuesday by a committee of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. The increase, which is expected to be endorsed by the 13-member board at a meeting Wednesday, is $400 million more than fund executives had expected to seek from the state. The state currently contributes $3.3 billion a year to employees' pensions. The jump in the state's annual contractual payment...

What does IBM know that most New York lawmakers don't? Judging by Big Blue's recent announcement that it is shifting to a defined-contribution pension plan, it knows that these plans are the only way forward for any company that hopes to stay on this side of bankruptcy court. Defined contributions have been the norm among small companies for years, but old industrial giants have been slow on the draw. Some, like General Motors, are still grappling with defined benefit pension programs ... There's a lesson here for New Yorkers faced with troubled pension systems. The logic becoming so catastrophically clear...

Late in 2003, nearly a year after the pension board had entered into a deal with the city to avoid fully funding the retirement system, pension administrator Lawrence Grissom offered a candid evaluation in an e-mail message. " . . . Bad things began to happen . . . greed happened," he wrote to an attorney of the circumstances surrounding the city's 2002 plan, which was linked to increases in employee benefits. The agreement helped the city stave off the prospect of having to make a multimillion-dollar payment – anywhere from $25 million to more than $500 million – to...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A key player in the state's powerful education lobby on Friday criticized a Democratic compromise proposal on the state budget, throwing a last-minute curve into talks that both sides said were progressing toward a possible deal. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature's Democratic majority have been separated for weeks on spending differences that total less than 1 percent of an estimated $116 billion annual spending plan. The divide, however small, is as much philosophical as fiscal, illustrating the Republicans' desire to pass a budget that doesn't add a single dollar in deficit spending. At issue is money...

SACRAMENTO - The day after Arnold Schwarzenegger launched an initiative drive to remake public pensions, a prominent ally of President George Bush attacked the plan and pleaded with the GOP governor to pursue an alternative. Forcing new public employees to move to a 401(k)-style pension system -- in which they would invest their own money and assume the risk of playing the stock market -- would hurt the University of California's ability to attract top talent, said Gerald Parsky, chairman of UC's Board of Regents. The proposal is one of three ``reforms'' that Schwarzenegger said Tuesday he wants to take...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A week after they voted to against his plan to privatize the state's public pension system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday ousted four of his appointees to the board of the California State Teachers Retirement System. The sudden firings of Mark Battey, James Gray, Miguel Pulido and Gloria Hom, who were appointed by Schwarzenegger to the board last year, leave one-third of the 12-member board vacant. Last month, Schwarznegger proposed turning the state's two huge public pension plans into a system more like a 401(k) savings plan in which workers make defined contributions. CalSTRS and its board manages...

With a massive funding shortfall looming, trustees of the California State Teachers' Retirement System began grappling Thursday with the painful task of either boosting pension contributions or slashing benefits for newly hired teachers. Ultimately, officials predicted, benefits for future retirees will have to be cut by $50 to $500 a month to erase a funding gap expected to be $23.1 billion in three decades. Pension plan executives laid out a series of possible cost-cutting and revenue-generating steps: * The state could sell pension obligation bonds. CalSTRS would then use the proceeds to increase investments, hoping to generate hefty returns to...

* A city once known for good management has a pension plan more than $1 billion in the red. SAN DIEGO — Somewhere in tax-fighting heaven, Howard Jarvis must be spinning. The city that the late sponsor of Proposition 13 once extolled as nonpareil in its stewardship of public money ("If all cities were run as well as San Diego, we wouldn't need Proposition 13") is now caught in a financial crisis of colossal proportions.

<p>With the cost to taxpayers for state worker pensions soaring from $200 million in 2001 to more than $2.5 billion this year, it's no wonder Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed trimming retirement benefits for future state employees. But as a recent independent analysis points out, the governor's plan has problems. A more modern approach would be better for the employees while saving taxpayers even more in the long run.</p>

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's instincts on public employee pensions are correct. The only problem with his proposal to rein in the cost of the state's retirement system is that it doesn't go far enough.</p> <p>Schwarzenegger recognizes that the state went overboard in 1999, when the Legislature and then-Gov. Gray Davis agreed to use a big projected surplus in the retirement fund to goose pensions. Lawmakers were told that the fund was so flush with stock market earnings that the benefit increase would be essentially free, and that costs to taxpayers for the overall retirement program would remain low for years.</p>