The "fix" for PERS crafted by the State Democrats will come back to bite everybody, and they know it but are not willing to pay the price to actually fix the underlying unsustainable fiscal issue and alienate their State Employees Unions. The Senate Bill 822 is going to be forced through without any Republican support and Kitzhaber says he'll sign it.
According to this Oregonian story "The bill amounts to a roll of the dice on investment returns. It
still leaves school districts facing layoffs. It doesn't address the
heart of the PERS sustainability problem: windfall benefits being
generated under the system's money match formula. And it has the
Legislature telling the PERS Board, by fiat, to alter its actuarial
methods to solve the immediate budget problem -- the kind of move that
has gotten states like Illinois in deep pension trouble.".
"Using rates as a supposed savings mechanism is not really savings,"
said James Dalton, former chair of the PERS Board. "It's pushing
obligations into the future and violates some of our actuarial
principles."
Actuarial principles are designed to keep us from kidding ourselves into posing a rosy future that likely will never come to pass. Stay tuned.
Update, I looked further and saw this excellent post on Blue Oregon.
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