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Free Newsletters
“BenefitsLink continues to be the most valuable resource we have at the firm.”
-- An attorney subscriber
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18 Matching News Items |
| 1. |
50-State Pension Calculator for Public Sector Employees
Public Sector Inc. 
May 2, 2014
"The pension calculator tool ... is intended to inform the pension debate, by allowing users to easily compare benefit levels across all 50 states. Simply click on a state highlighted in blue in the map ... to estimate the pension that you would collect after a career in government. The calculator will also provide an estimate of the total annuity cost, or how much you would need to save to replicate that guaranteed income stream in retirement. To compare generosity of benefits between states, click on the 'Compare States' tab."
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| 2. |
Why Defined Benefit Retirement Plans Have No Place in the Local or State Public Sector
Public Sector Inc.
June 26, 2013
"In America, through a mix of incentives and regulations, we rely on employers to provide benefits that European governments provide through taxing and spending. But we shouldn't expect government employers to bear more of a burden than private sector firms for workers' healthcare and retirement.... Guaranteeing a secure retirement should be the responsibility of the Federal government (Social Security and Medicare), retirees and their families, not state and local governments."
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| 3. |
Health Benefits Are Still Richer in Public Sector
Public Sector Inc.
Dec. 3, 2012
"The standard employee premium share for a family plan is 23% in the public sector and 30% in the private, which works out to a difference of $1,100 annually.... [P]rivate workers face higher deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance costs.... Governments offer health benefits to more of their employees than private firms (75% vs. 59%).... Somewhere between 60-80% of large government employers offer [retiree healthcare], whereas fewer than 20% of large private employers do."
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| 4. |
14 Cities That Are Being Eaten Alive by Public Sector Workers
Business Insider, Inc.
July 18, 2011
Skyrocketing employee costs -- the result of overly generous union contracts, an aging workforce, and bad pension investments -- are now pushing several municipalities to the brink of fiscal ruin. Without union concessions or substantial reform, these cities will edge closer to insolvency while residents pay higher taxes for deteriorating public services.
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| 5. |
Washington State Court Case Illustrates Risk of Increasing Pension Benefits for Public Employees
Public Sector Inc.
Nov. 6, 2013
"[M]ore than two dozen state courts, including Washington State's, have blocked changes even to future benefit accruals if it involves decreasing them. Instead, the Washington court and other courts, led by California's Supreme Court, force a government employer to continue allowing workers to accrue benefits at the same level for their entire careers. Perversely, the courts allow states and cities to increase benefits at any time."
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| 6. |
Are Public Pension Plans on the Road to Recovery?
Public Sector Inc.
Apr. 2, 2013
"Many systems are still burdened with significant shortfalls, which put governments in the awkward position of having to either reduce funding for other priorities to support pensions, or to defer payments, leading to greater problems in the future. Moreover, what it means for a pension system to be 'well-funded' remains controversial, as new accounting standards set to take effect soon will cause most systems to appear worse off than at present. So how to make sense of these mixed signals? Are public pension systems on the road to recovery?"
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| 7. |
Public Pension Fallacy #5 Will Not Go Away
Public Sector Inc.
Mar. 21, 2013
"When public pension fund administrators assume their risky investments will achieve the expected return, they are failing to account for the risk that their investments will underperform expectations. Lowering the discount rate measures the cost of that risk, which comes in the form of a contingent liability on future taxpayers. Risk-adjustment through a lower discount rate doesn't involve any 'predictions' or 'assumptions' or 'projections' -- it measures the actual amounts that financial markets charge to guarantee payment of a future liability."
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| 8. |
What We Mean When We Refer to Pension and Health Care Costs As 'Unsustainable,' in One Chart
Public Sector Inc.
Feb. 21, 2013
"This chart is from a report on Baltimore's Ten-Year Fiscal Forecast, prepared by Public Financial Management, Inc. It was commissioned by the mayor of Baltimore. It speaks for itself."
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| 9. |
GASB Standards Assume Away Reality
Public Sector Inc.
July 24, 2012
"The average public pension plan is only 41 percent funded, when calculated with the same financial methods used in the private sector, according to a recent report ... Using a fair market valuation approach that captures the value of pension benefits guaranteed to be paid as opposed to using unrealistic Government Accounting Standards Board assumptions based on the highly unlikely expected returns on stocks, private equity, or hedge funds, Biggs finds that public pensions 'face unfunded liabilities of approximately $4.6 trillion dollars.'"
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| 10. |
SEC Commissioner's Not-So-Tough Talk on Pensions
Steve Malanga for Public Sector Inc.
June 8, 2014
"[Perhaps] it was bracing for some people to hear an SEC commissioner actually use the words 'fraud' and 'pension obligations' in the same speech. But in fact, what Gallagher was advocating was higher voluntary standards from public pension."
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| 11. |
Lessons from San Bernardino Bankruptcy
Public Sector Inc.
Sept. 2, 2013
"Some American states have over a hundred different public pension systems. Policy experts tend to view this as inefficient and advocate consolidated systems at the state level as a remedy. But the potential benefits of centralization -- lower administrative costs and more professionalization -- should be weighed against the thin empirical evidence for it and the dangers of creating a bully like CalPERS, which plays a major role in shaping policy. San Bernardino retirees would still have the right to protest pension cuts in bankruptcy even were there no CalPERS."
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| 12. |
A Tale of Four Cities: Pension Reform in and Out of Bankruptcy
Public Sector Inc.
Nov. 26, 2014
"Creating a workable cash-out option is an important pension reform worth considering because it has the potential to dramatically reduce the cycle-time required before a defined benefit plan can be permanently closed out. As the Vallejo experience illustrates, ignoring the unfunded pension liabilities is not a viable option."
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| 13. |
The Great Discount Rate Flip-Flop
Steve Eide in Public Sector Inc.
June 6, 2014
"In signing on to the city's bankruptcy plan, Detroit's two retirement systems have agreed to lower their discount rates to 6.75% from around 8%.... Detroit's Wall Street creditors ... argue that lowering the rate was all part of a populist scheme hatched by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to exaggerate the size of his proposed pension cuts. Orr's actuarial conservatism fails bankruptcy's 'unfair discrimination' test, which requires that creditors with equally strong claims to repayment get repaid at roughly equal rates."
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| 14. |
Philly Schools' Pension Nightmare
Public Sector Inc.
Aug. 27, 2013
"[T]he PSERS system's projections of future contribution rates ... [lead to] a rapid increase in district contributions from $32 million in 2011 to $139 million annually by 2020, assuming that the state continues to increase its share of funding for Philly's teacher pensions. But that's a big assumption because the burden on the state will grow, too. The total bill for annual pension contributions to the Philly school district by 2020 will be $349 million, meaning that the state will have to kick in $210 million annually by 2020[.]"
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| 15. |
Los Angeles Stares Over Pension Cliff, Glimpses Insolvency
Public Sector Inc.
Mar. 5, 2013
"[A]ll it takes is a few sub-par years and funds begin demanding higher annual pension payments from governments. In LA's case, those payments have risen to 18 percent of expenditures. That's an awful lot to be spending just on pensions."
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| 16. |
The Relative Performance Record and Asset Allocation of Public Defined Benefit Plans (PDF)
Morningstar; free registration may be required
Jan. 18, 2008
15 pages. Excerpt: Morningstar, Inc. and the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) are pleased to present this inaugural report on the unique roles, investment performance, and portfolio holdings of public sector defined benefit pension plans.
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| 17. |
Cash Balance Plans at the Municipal Level (PDF)
RetirementWORKS, Inc.
Sept. 24, 2021
"Cash Balance plans are immensely popular in business and industry, but are rare in the public sector. A handful of states have statewide plans that local governments participate in, but few municipal governments have their own plans. That's why it's hard to find information about them. This report fills that gap."
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| 18. |
Thousands of Federal Employees Mistakenly Placed Into FERS System without Their Consent
National Journal Group Inc. via GovExec.com
Oct. 28, 2005
Excerpt: The glitch mostly affected employees who had worked under the old system, left government and later returned to the public sector, and employees who had experienced changes in appointment types or who had worked in excepted service agencies and then moved to the standard personnel system.
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