PICAYUNE —
It’s time for the PERS Board and Executive Director to fess up to the serious problems facing the state retirement system.
It’s time for the Legislature to put politics aside and face up to these problems. I
t’s time for us retirees to tune in to reality, take our medicine now, and avoid drastic measures that may be required sooner than later.
The latest PERS actuarial report paints a dim picture. PERS suffered a composite loss of $1.8 billion for the last fiscal year. Unfunded liabilities grew to $14.5 billion. The funded ratio fell to 58 percent. The market value of assets fell 3 percent.
Maybe those numbers don’t mean much. Consider these then.
On June 30, 2007, the actuary showed PERS with $19.7 billion in assets and $26.8 billion in liabilities for a funding shortfall of $7.1 billion. (PERS is supposed to be fully funded.)
On June 30, 2012, the actuary showed PERS with $19.9 billion in assets and $34.4 billion in liabilities for a funding shortfall of $14.5 billion.
So, for the past five years PERS assets held steady will while liabilities jumped 28 percent.
Pay attention. The shortfall more than doubled despite big increases in contributions.
Each year since 2006, PERS has increased the employer contribution rate paid by schools, cities, counties, colleges, universities, state agencies and other entities covered by PERS. The employer rate rose from 9.75 percent to 14.26 percent and will rise to 15.83 percent next year.
In 2011 the employee contribution rate increased to 9 percent.
Each year, PERS told us retirees the increased contributions would close the funding shortfall and, thereby, keep the system financially secure.
That has not happened.
The opposite did. The shortfall kept growing and PERS got less financially secure. This was the fifth straight year that the funded ratio fell and eighth out of the last 10. The financial solvency test performed by the PERS actuary shows increased risk each year.
The time is near, if not at hand, when schools, cities, counties, colleges, universities and the taxpayers who fund them will balk at paying exorbitant rates for retirement. Paying 15.83 percent over a 30-year period — yes, that’s what is expected — is too high for a prudent public retirement plan.
The time is near, if not at hand, when bond rating agencies will call Mississippi’s hand for its ever-increasing unfunded liabilities. They have already voiced concerns.
If either of these events happens, the state may have to take quick action in response. Quick action is not likely to be good for us retirees. Yes, our benefits can be reduced when the state acts to “preserve the solvency of the system.”
A much better course is to make less stressful but effective adjustments now, such as those recommended by the PERS Study Commission. It’s time.
(Crawford (crawfolk@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and state retiree from Meridian.)
Columns
PERS has another bad year
- Columns
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Columns Headlines
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