POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Public Pensions, Finance, and Unions 15May2011 Deadline Edition

It's deep into publication deadline season for me (working on life reinsurance! Woo! This weekend! Awesome! Not!) so my editorial comments will be at a minimum.

Yeah.

Right.

EUROPE

Greece: their finances suck. Response? You know. The experts do not see this ending well, not just for Greece, but the entire eurozone (I like the restructuring option built into the bonds to begin with - if you were a sucker to trust Greece, or expect a bailout, you get what you deserve.)

UK: public employees to hold a more restrained set of strikes over pension cuts. Guys, doesn't matter if you go the violent route or the civilized route -- you're not getting your goodies. Because there's no one to pay for them.

Ireland: not doing so well, either. What are they going to do? Tax private pensions. A 60-basis point tax on assets. Per annum. "Temporarily". Uh-huh. Pull on the other one, it's got bells. Oh, but some people get better treatment than others. Surprise.

Some reactions to the Ireland plan. Pension professionals not pleased - well, duh, it would kill many private pensions. Leo Kolivakis rounds up more, and is also skeptical of how useful this will be.

The Irish people have been told to shut up and not to whine, because FISCAL ARMAGEDDON would result if they didn't go with the EU-IMF bailout. IMF, huh? Those guys have a good reputation, don't they?

OUR UNDERPAID PUBLIC SERVANTS

California lifeguards, making over 200K.

Illinois assistant superintendent of Education making over 300K, making 60K more than his supposed boss.

High-paid public employees is not just a U.S. thing. What was that about austerity in Ireland again -- evidently not everyone gets hit.

A public hospital CEO given $4M in pension benefits.

SOCIAL SECURITY

A report came out. Social Security is in the red from now on...til something changes. And something will change. The problem is now, not when the lie that is the Trust Fund is depleted.

GENERAL PENSION STUFF

USPS ain't doing so hot - it's not just a pension thing, but hey -- it's a big part of their problem.

Remember the injustice that the Wisconsin public employees were having their God-given rights to collectively bargain yanked away by harsh, unfeeling Republicans? Well, weep for this group of government employees who have never been given this right, and who might get their pensions cut.... federal workers.

Oh, and it's not just undercontributions and overgenerous benefit designs that got us into this mess. There's also pension fund corruption.

Just take a look at this graph... the horizontal axis is only a 11-year period, so why would that slope be so steep? Think about what's going on there.

Oh, all this public pension foo-fa-raw is pure envy on the part of the have-nots. Hmmm. What was that about class war, again? Didn't expect to be in the "have" class, now did we, union agitators?

CALIFORNIA

CHiPs get real and negotiate, bumping retirement age up to the ancient 55 years old. Hey, it's better than their prior eligibility age at 50. (and 3% per year? Holy crap, that's generous at any age.)

San Jose mayor declares fiscal emergency, pensions play large role.

A review of the pension pain precipice in Santa Cruz.

Cutting police and jail services to pay for pensions.

Sacramento County must hand over pension info to media, says court.

UC system benefit perk still paying out when it can least afford it (WARNING: NYT link).... this will play out interestingly.

CONNECTICUT

Step up, ladies and gentleman, and let me introduce you to your next version of Prichard, Alabama. I do not see the pensioners of Hamden, CT, doing well over the next five years. Why, do you ask?

The town’s pension is 25% funded, and the mayor only allocated a $3 million contribution, or around 15% of the $19.85 million recommended by the town’s actuaries, for the upcoming fiscal year. The pension was closed to new enrollees in 2008, but supports 664 retirees and 568 active employees. The fund has only $75 million in assets and $242.3 million in unfunded liabilities. The pension pays out around $20 million each year to current retirees.

Yeaaaaaaaah. That's what we call unsustainable. This is a completely foreseeable disaster. It does not take fancy math to see that the money will run out in short order.

We see this on a relatively small scale - a town with a less than a couple thousand people impacted by the money running out. So what do we do when it's Illinois or New Jersey? Prichard retirees have not gotten bailed out, Hamden employees will not get bailed out, and when it's order of magnitude larger -- it's not going to get bailed out because there's no money of. Tough shit.

ILLINOIS

There's been a lot of politicking by state employees lately in Illinois. I don't think it's going to work -- because the hole is too big. But let's take these things one by one.

Don't break pension promises, say those from the public union side.

A TRS trustee writes a letter and Bill Zettler has some pointed questions to ask those on the teachers union side. (I will pick only a couple):

4. Why are teachers allowed 2 years of sick leave credit when they retire adding enormously to the pension cost? No one in the private sector has that.
....
9. If pensions are reasonable how can a 54 year-old Music teacher retire on a pension of $130,000 after working only 33 years and contributing only $193,000? Since he retired in 2009 he has already received more than he contributed ($225,000). That does not seem reasonable to the 95% of IL workers who are not in the state pension system. The cash value of his pension is 8 times what Social Security would be for the same salary and years worked. Why does any public employee deserve more than 8 times Social Security?

There is a lot more at the link.

A police union leader again reiterates that pension promises must be kept.

From the business side, a call for reality -- and explains measures he had to take to make his private pension plan sustainable.

Overview of proposed pension changes, the main change being that employees would have to contribute a lot more to the pension fund...and the unions claim this to be unconstitutional. Oh, this should be interesting.

Picking low-hanging fruit: cutting a benefit for local pols.

KANSAS

Making the case that Kansas police retirees have a modest pension benefit. I'm going to go all actuary on your ass for a moment:

Our retirees live to an average age of 72 — six years below the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Let's go to the life tables, shall we? Life table for 2006 from the CDC, and historical life expectancy (go to table 22 if it doesn't take you there automatically). Now, these are general population mortality tables, which includes all sorts of sick people, but let's assume it's okay. First thing that's deceptive about his statement: I bet most of the retirees are male. There is a major life expectancy gap between males and females to begin with, which makes for a couple years difference between the general population life expectancy and male life expectancy. Secondly, that 76-ish life expectancy in the general population is 1. from birth and 2. assuming you were born after the 1990s (so it involves guesswork on mortality patterns). Well, were you?

In any case, the life expectancy stats include people who died in infancy and childhood and is not the proper number to compare against for pension plans. You should either use life expectancy from age you enter the plan (say, age 25 or 30), or retirement age (say 50 or 55).

Now, I don't have enough info to do a good comparison of the life/death stats on that pension plan and other pension plans/general population. I don't know what time period that life expectancy was calculated over... but more to the point, it might be irrelevant.

Sir, your retirees might die young, but I bet many of them have spouses/ex-spouses who get joint benefits. What are their ages? What have their death age distributions been like? You can have a policeman die at age 60 and his widow collects full benefits til she's 95. Let's talk relevancies.

Ok, enough actuary talk for this post. And if I screwed up any of the details above, I'm sure one of my fellow actuaries will set me aright.

MICHIGAN

Looks like that pension tax (oh, sorry, "curb on pension tax breaks") passed. Let's see what happens.

NEBRASKA

Not a generic public pension issue, but interesting trivia: criminal's pension protected from being garnished to pay for money he owes sexual assault victim. This is an ex-state patrolman child molester, if one wants to get more specific.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Employees rush to retire. But hey guys, just saying -- being a retiree won't necessarily save you from fiscal pain.

Why are they rushing to retirement? Because of ongoing pension reform discussions.

NEW JERSEY

John Bury notes that New Jersey needs minimum funding rules on its pensions, and supports the passing of PEPTA, a federal bill requiring greater
transparency in public plan reporting.

Of course, even without those requirements, the bond markets are waking up to their risks.

And the various NJ unions are trying to remain relevant and hold onto what they've got in this debate. Good luck with that.

RHODE ISLAND

Pension reform goes out with a whimper... I guess when they run out of money will be the bang. More on the death of reform efforts this year. Pony up, taxpayers.

Looks like investigations into possible disability pension fraud is ongoing, though.

Public Pensions, Finance, and Union Spew 5 May 2011

Cinco de Mayo!!!!!

WOOOOOOO!!!!!

And you know what's the perfect thing to kill the party spirit -- yeah! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

Okay, kick it.

UNIONS AND THEIR FRIENDS

Washington Examiner opinion piece -- Abuses Happen When Unions Have Government Friends.

A letter: public employees are just like you. Yes, when I screw up majorly, I get protected from firing and I can retire with a DB pension in my mid-50s. Just like me. Oh, and I can opt out of Social Security. There are services that perhaps should be controlled directly by the government, but it seems to me that much of this stuff can be outsourced to private companies, just as my company outsources its payroll operations, for example. If the public employees are just like the private ones, seems like if the private ones are cheaper, it's in my interest as a taxpayer to get the cheaper one that gives me the same service.

Way to shoot yourself in the foot, dipwad.

Want to see other ways public employees are just like you? Just check out the various perks some get, like million-dollar home loan concessions.

BOOMER (NON-)RETIREMENT TWADDLE

Sure, one of these things is not like the other, but thought I'd throw it in here. A too-precious NYT review of a book on the "encore stage" for Boomers. For we Xers, this is the "dammit, do we have to get out the hook to yank them off the stage?" stage.

FINANCE SINKING US ALL

Steve Forbes on middle class tax hikes to bailout public pensions. And you can't tax the rich because 1. there's not enough of them and 2. the middle class has more money, collectively.

PENSIONS ON THE WHOLE

Just a note -- we've been seeing a lot of public pension fund managers leaving to go into the private sector. HMMMM. You think they know something? I think what they know is that the private sector pays more, is less political, and is actually a lot lower-profile.... especially as some ugly financial battles are upcoming.

On the Pew report on public pensions: state pension gap continues to grow.

CALIFORNIA

John Dickerson at YourPublicMoney.com has been detailing the failure of public financial management in Mendocino County. Check out his latest issue (currently on the three levels of financial problems - how, once the county got into debt, it wasn't dealt with... my never heard anything like that before.)

California employees trying to defend their "modest" benefits. Thing is, guys - if it's $1,000 for 1,000 people, that's $1M. A lot of little "modest" benefits can add up, and if proper provision is not made, even "modest" benefits can be unaffordable. And here's the kicker: something can look like a small amount of money, but if it's going to be paid out monthly over a period of 40- 50 years.... and inflation-adjusted.... yeah.

Interesting: a councilman requests a legal analysis of San Bernadino's pension obligations, which the council as a whole rejects. But as some of the councilmen note, it's becoming a squeeze between current services and benefits paid for past services.

Now is not the time for a $4-million retirement package. Dude, you picked a poor time to be in the public sector.

That said, politicians look out for their own as they nix a proposal to yank benefits from corrupt officials. Hey, =they= could be those corrupt officials in the future!

DELAWARE

Governor signs bill that requires employees to contribute more to their pension and health benefits.

FLORIDA

More modest pension reform bill sent to the governor.

GEORGIA

The case of the missing pension docs

ILLINOIS

Public employee unions trying to make PR case to avoid getting hit by budget cuts. Here's a thought -- let taxes be raised just on you guys to cover the expense, and you don't get cut! I'm all about the win-win.

And here are the unions trying to protect their pensions. Guys, you should've thought of that when the pension obligation bonds were being issued instead of real contributions being made. Blog post on this from Capitol Fax. It looks like this will be a very interesting legislative season in Illinois.

Oh look what ex-mayor Daley is up to: dumping all his pensionable service into one bucket. Read the comments on the story for some fun. A Daley spending any time off the public teat? You must be joking. Special extra bonus Daley puke: Daley's farewell speech.

One of the worst pension funds in the country -- Illinois Teachers Retirement System. Always been in crappy financial position...follow the timeline from 1973 (before I was born).

KANSAS

In current negotiations, a 401(k)-style pension option for state employees is off the table. Lots of negotiations ongoing, stalls, etc.

MICHIGAN

Mayor Bing of Detroit has unveiled his deficit-cutting plan. Changes to retirees benefits (medical and pensions) are a big part of this plan. More on Detroit budgeting.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Negotiations are ongoing in the state legislature over pension reform. (I know, I know... exciting!) The House is cramming its bill with all sorts of reform measures that the Senate has rejected (ain't that the way). This part is unlikely to pass, but this is the most intriguing reform measure I've heard of:

The House added two controversial items to the Senate bill. One would punish public workers if unions sue over the reform, forcing them to absorb a major hike in their pension contribution rate they take a challenge goes to court. Opponents have called it a “poison pill” clause. If employers challenge the reform, there would be no similar penalty.

NEW JERSEY

A very short video courtesy of John Bury and a recent actuarial meeting - don't worry, no scary number-crunching, though it is scary. Here is a key exchange:

John Bury says: "What tools do the actuary need or should the actuary have to handle New Jersey?"

NASRA's Keith Brainard: "New Jersey would make a terrible place to make a pension policy"

....
Mr. Brainard ended his response to my question by saying:
“We get the government we deserve and New Jersey voters ought to stand up and demand better.”

[Dan, if you could embed the video, that would be great]

Yes, the voters of NJ got the government they deserve good and hard.

Of course, who am I (New Yorker ... BY CHOICE... to talk).

OKLAHOMA

Legislators approve plan to require pension cost-of-living adjustments to be funded. You'd think that would already be required, but you'd be wrong. Many COLAs are "funded" by being amortized over a very long period... and the person who received the bump may be long dead while the benefit is still being paid for. Yay. An opinion piece approving of the move.

RHODE ISLAND

News flash: fixing the pensions may mean CHANGING THE BENEFITS! whoa. Never thought of that. (yes, and this includes current employees.... and though she doesn't say it explicitly, current retirees.) More from the state treasurer on this issue.

Criminal investigation of a disability pension being paid to a firefighter - looking into whether it's fraud. Fun factoid: accidental disability pensions such as this on make up more than half the pension payments the Providence FD makes this year -- almost 60%, in fact.

WASHINGTON

Even in Washington State, double-dipping isn't looked upon kindly.

WEST VIRGINIA

After Pew released its updated report on state pensions this year you're going to see more of these stories as each state sees where it falls out. And West Virginia gets to shout We're #2! We're #2!

CANADA

There was an election in Canada recently, and a bunch of MPs (not me!) lost their jobs. But don't worry about them! They've got cushy pensions to fall back on. No, really, they'll be okay.

Public unions, pensions, and finance (OH MY!) 14April2011

Sorry for the hiatus. Who knew that quitting a job could be so much work?

Jumping into it:

PUBLIC UNIONS: MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE

We've seen the good judgment (and pertinence) of unions from Adam's link below, but let's see what happens when they stick to their knitting. They get ideas like this:

The “potential activities” include:

* Target the businesses of legislators in their home districts.
....
* Make phone calls on Parents’ Day. Call parents to tell them how their child is doing and then talk about the budget cuts and invite them to attend the rallies.
....
* Throw monopoly money in the toilet to show that all our money is going down the drain
....
* One-day boycott of Microsoft and other corporations that are pushing failed education reform efforts.

* Turn fire/earthquake drill into crisis response drill to the budget cuts (involve students and the community)

* Attempt to close a major artery into town/cities
....
* Dye hair red or wear red wigs

* Homeless encampments of students and teachers as they can afford a place to live
....
* Pay for everything with $2 bills to show true impact of teachers

* “Lights Out Day” during the week where educators teach in the dark
....
* Work with organization like Ben & Jerry to have them create a labor-union flavored ice cream that can be sold at the rallies and in stores

More great ideas at the link (I pulled out the ones I thought particularly stupid. Yes, call up parents directly after talking about how their particular kid is doing in class and ask them to come to pro-union rallies.... nobody will think there's some implied threat there, will they?)

The biggest issues with the public unions now - in terms of their PR stupidity:
1. You're pissing people off for a variety of reasons (the stupid tactics are part of the reason. Ice cream flavor? Oh, come on.)
2. The people you're pissing off pay your salaries and benefits, dumbasses
3. Part of the "pissing people off" is asking for more money from these pissed-off people. And it's frickin tax time. I am putting off writing some very big checks til tomorrow, and I know that does not put me in a good mood.
4. But there are things more important than money. What super-pisses people off? Targeting their kids.

You may think fear and intimidation works, but Americans don't do fear well. They do do ass-kicking well. Even in California. You are asking for a political beat-down if you guys go after the kids like that. Well, as long as we have the secret ballot. And can keep the fraud down.

Shock: looks like those Wisconsin teachers were doing an illegal sick-out.

FEDERAL

The coming bailout of the U.S. postal service.

Sherrod Brown proposes not letting legislators be eligible for pension benefits til Social Security retirement age. He wants to use it as a cudgel to convince Congress not to raise the SocSec retirement age, but I see it as a first step toward getting rid of politicians' pensions... go for it!

CALIFORNIA

For now, the Orange County sheriff deputies get to hang onto their pension boosts. Enjoy the legal victories while you can. The law can't keep the taxpayers from moving away, and it can't keep the money from running out.

So while a smartass judge noted: “Imprudence, however, is not unconstitutional.” Let me note that a state constitution can't will money into being. So enjoy the cashflow while it exists, guys.

Pension reform proposed in San Francisco. There are competing proposals... maybe one will get through. Of course, the public employee unions are not enjoying a taste of reality, and have fought (successfully) against prior reform attempts. Good luck!

An attempt to say that California's budget woes are not caused by the pensions. Not in the short term, at any rate.

San Diego councilman notes that the pension costs keep going up. Huh. Wonder why that is.

Tit-for-tat: can't have investment managers working for the state who are trying to make public pensions more sane, doncha know. Hey, let's rope in the Koch Brothers somehow!

When the economy was going kerflooey, some California municipalities and counties wasted no time in sweetening pensions. Great timing, guys!

Newport Beach considers firing workers in response to rising pension costs. Costa Mesa has already started sending out the pink slips. Paying for current services or past services - that's the tug-of-war now.

News alert: making public employees contribute to their pensions is cutting their pay! Hey, lady -- increasing tax rates on everyone else to cover pension shortfalls is cutting those people's pay! Ain't it funny how math works?

ILLINOIS

Julie Schmidt and Bill Zettler at Big Government rebut NPR and the Weekly Standard over Illinois pensions. A collection of Bill's articles on pension issues can be found here.

I'm shocked, shocked: Some elected officials in Illinois are really gaming the pension system.

MICHIGAN

They are still debating about taxing pensions. I understand the appeal of the idea, but there's not much keeping retirees in Michigan to begin with (other than said retirees can't sell their houses). Florida and Texas (and Tennessee and Nevada and...) would be beneficiaries to this proposal. I can see Hawaii getting away with it, because at least it's pretty there (but it looks like it won't happen there, either).

Detroit mayor trying to deal with a very bad budget situation. Shows the result of what happens when a local economy craters, and the tax base moves away. Seems the mayor has come to grips with reality, even if the city employees have not.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Continuing debate on pension reforms. I've been seeing a lot of stories like this, from a town level, to county, to state.... and we'll be seeing this on a federal level with Social Security. But that's for a different post.

NEW JERSEY

Come on, Christie, do you really think you can shame a Democrat from enriching herself from the public till? Of course, one of the reasons he's doing this is one of his own buddies got caught double-dipping.

NEW YORK

Gov. Cuomo says he'll veto pension fatteners...but these union-bribing bills will probably never make it to his desk in the first place. I find it interesting that he felt the need to explicitly promise vetos given that he probably wouldn't have to do it even if he hadn't said anything.

Interesting how Cuomo doesn't get beat up in the press for his anti-union talk the way Christie does. I wonder why that may be....

Public Union kiss-up John Liu (NYC Comptroller, and probable mayoral candidate) claims that NYC pension shortfalls mainly due to poor investment experience. I'll have Monty from AoS explain the situation:

New York City officials: "Apparently, our wildly optimistic rate-of-return calculations are to blame for our pension shortfalls. Not our overly-generous retirement benefit packages!"
Monty: "Well, yeah, but aren't you having to assume these ridiculous rates of return because of these generous benefits you've promised?"
New York City officials: "Shut up-a you face, you!"

And as I've said before in retort to Dean Baker and his ilk: you can keep trying to shift around the blame, but now it's come to the point where we "ain't got the money of" (as my family says). When you don't got the money of, it ends up not mattering how you got that way when you're trying to figure out how to deal with cashflow issues going forward. If the benefits are unaffordable, they will not be continued.

Blame the Wall Street fatcats (mmm, reminds me, I'm gonna have a nice lunch on Stone St. today), but the fatcats don't have enough money to plug your public finance hole.

Oh, wait - I've been inspired!

There's a hole in the budget, dear 'liza, dear 'liza
There's a hole in the budget, dear 'liza, a hole

Tax the rich, tax the rich, dear Henry, dear Henry
Tax the rich, tax the rich, dear Henry, the rich

But they ain't got 'nuff money, dear 'liza, dear 'liza
They ain't got 'nuff money, dear 'liza, now what?

Tax everybody, everybody, dear Henry, dear Henry
Tax everybody, everybody, dear Henry, everyone

But they ain't got 'nuff either, dear 'liza, dear 'liza
there ain't 'nuff money for our goodies, dear 'liza, we're screwed

Maybe 'liza will realize that the goodies ain't gonna be coming. And by "'liza", I mean the Boomers. You guys aren't getting the Medicare coverage your parents got. Suck it. You should've had more kids. And bypassed the whole hippie thing.

Okay, we return from our musical interlude to move on to the next state.

RHODE ISLAND

Town of Warwick starts a pension debate. Union members show up in matching Tshirts. The oh-so-tough reform proposal?

His plan would impose a minimum retirement age on city employees. Police and firefighters would have to be at least 50 years old to retire, and municipal workers at least 59. Currently, city employees can retire at any age as long as they have the requisite number of years of service.

Avedisian’s proposal would also increase the minimum years of service needed for retirement from 20 to 25 for police and firefighters. Municipal employees would need 25 years of service.
....
Avedisian’s proposal would affect only employees hired after July 1, 2012.

I can see why the union would feel threatened. This sounds too reasonable! Heck, the taxpayers may start expecting town employees to wait til they're 65 to retire! The horror!

After adjusting the pension valuation assumptions for a bit more reality, Rhode Island's pension now looks like one of the worst in the country for fundedness. But let's be fair here: they reduced the discount rate from 8.35% to 7.5%, which had to have had a huge impact on the valuation... and we saw recently that Calpers didn't budge from its own discount rate of 7.75%. Many have rates of 8% and higher, and will not change that, because it does make the plan look really really bad. They also changed other assumptions that also made the pension look more expensive.

It's difficult to compare public pensions against each other, not just because you have different benefit designs, but some key assumptions, which really shouldn't differ all that much between plans (such as discount rate), are all over the board across the country. It makes it difficult to say who really has the funding problem.

So, buck up, Rhode Island! Sure, your pension plan is woefully underfunded, but you're probably not really the worst! It's just those other guys have their thumbs on the scale!

More news coverage on the Rhode Island pension funding suckitude from the AP and Bloomberg.

Easy Breezy Sunday Public Pensions and Finance 27Mar2011

Hey, might as well clear out some more stories while I've got a breather!

GENERAL ISSUES

Dean Baker is breaking out his calculator again!!!!! Watch out!

"Eighty-eight of the 126 largest public pension plans assume a rate of return exceeding 8 percent a year, according to the Wall Street Journal. By way of comparison, the S&P 500 achieved a compound average annual growth rate of 5.69 percent over the past 20 years."
Okay, get your calculators out boys and girls. If I look up the value of the S&P 500 for March 1991 I get 375.22. The S&P closed yesterday at 1313.8. This gives a compounded annual rate of return of 6.46 percent.

Okay, Dean, I'm going to waste a little time and see if the WaPo was as far off as you say. (It was, by the way -- then I went to look back to see when was the last date that the 20-year annualized return was close to what WaPo said, and it was July 2010). I'm having a hard time getting total return data, though, so I can't check what he has to say about dividends. I see someone had put something up on wikipedia on total returns, but I don't see where they got their dividend info from.

States pass the budget pain down to the municipalities. Duh. Municipalities can go bankrupt, and states cannot. So that's one reason to do this particular money play. But it's good to cut off the cities that can't support themselves... because the people have moved away. Sometimes it's time for a city to die, and propping it up means driving people in general away from the state.

ARIZONA

Arizona jumps on the pension reform bandwagon, targeting the usual suspects: double-dipping, DROPs, low retirement ages.

CALIFORNIA

Stuff is going on in Los Angeles. The mayor cuts a deal with the unions on pensions. More on the deal; healthcare coverage is also involved.

FLORIDA

Taking a cue from Wisconsin, perhaps, Florida House passes bill to ban automatic deduction of union dues from state employee paychecks. That hurts a lot more than collective bargaining bans. Cut off the money, and how can the unions buy their politicians?

Some lawyers are "setting the record straight" on public pensions. It starts:

Are State and Local Government Pension Plans About to Run Out of Money? No, in fact, according to the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds, the combined value of public pensions was $2.73 Trillion as of 3rd quarter of 2010, the highest level in two years. This figure represents an increase of more than half a Trillion dollars since a low of $2.17 Trillion at the end of 1st quarter of 2009, and marks the fourth consecutive year-over-year quarterly increase.

MMmmmm, a little irrelevant. Nobody is saying they're immediately going to run out of money. Yet. They're saying that in the relatively short term (and in pensions, under 20 years is short term - it's shorter than the amortization period for making up losses many times) money will run out.

And there's some other really deceptive stuff in there as well. Why exactly would a DB plan be cheaper than a DC plan, hmmm?

But Why Should Public Employees Have the Most Expensive Type of Retirement Plan? They shouldn't, and they don't. In fact, when one considers the cost of achieving a specific retirement benefit goal under both a defined benefit plan -- which is made available to about 84 percent of all state and local government employees -- and the other common form of retirement plan, a defined contribution plan such as a 401(k), recent analysis has found that a DB plan costs about half as much as the DC plan. Specifically, it was determined that delivering the same retirement income to a group of workers is 46 percent cheaper using a DB plan than a DC plan.

As an actuary, I would like to know the drivers there. Is it the asset management fees? Is it the savings that come from people dying early? People not vesting?

Cough up links to that "recent analysis", guys, because I'm not buying this from a purely financial economics point of view.

Hmm. Who are their clients?

CITY OF BAL HARBOUR:
Bal Harbour Village Police Officers' Pension Plan and Trust
CITY OF BOCA RATON:
Boca Raton General Employees' Pension Fund
CITY OF CORAL SPRINGS:
City of Coral Springs Police Officers' Retirement Plan
CITY OF DELRAY BEACH:
City of Delray Beach Police & Firefighters Retirement System
CITY OF FORT LAUDERDALE:
City of Fort Lauderdale Police and Firefighters' Retirement System
CITY OF GAINESVILLE:
City of Gainesville Consolidated Police Officers and Firefighters Retirement Fund
CITY OF HIALEAH:
City of Hialeah Employees' Retirement System
CITY OF HIALEAH GARDENS:
Hialeah Gardens Police Officers Pension Trust Fund
CITY OF HOLLYWOOD:
Hollywood Firefighters' Pension Fund
Hollywood Police Pension Fund
CITY OF HOMESTEAD:
Homestead Retirement Income Plan for Firemen
Homestead Municipal Police Officers' Retirement Trust Fund
Elected Officials Retirement Plan
New Elected Officials and Senior Management Retirement System
VILLAGE OF KEY BISCAYNE:
Key Biscayne Police Officers' and Firefighters' Retirement Plan
CITY OF MARATHON:
City of Marathon Firefighters' Pension Plan and Trust Fund
CITY OF MIAMI:
Miami Firemen's Relief and Pension Fund
City of Miami Fire Fighters' and Police Officers' Retirement Trust
CITY OF MIAMI BEACH:
City Pension Fund for Firefighters and Police Officers in the City of Miami Beach (Consolidated)
Miami Beach Policemen's Relief and Pension Fund
Retirement System for General Employees of the City of Miami Beach (Consolidated)
VILLAGE OF MIAMI SHORES:
Miami Shores Pension Fund
Miami Shores Police Officers' Retirement System
CITY OF MIAMI SPRINGS:
City of Miami Springs General Employee's Retirement System
City of Miami Springs Police and Firefighters Retirement System
CITY OF NORTH MIAMI:
North Miami Employees' Retirement System Clair T. Singerman Pension Fund
North Miami Employees' Retirement System
North Miami Special Police Officers Fund
CITY OF PALM BAY:
Palm Bay Police & Firefighters Retirement Pension Plan
CITY OF PARKLAND:
City of Parkland Police Officers' Retirement Plan
CITY OF PEMBROKE PINES:
Pembroke Pines Pension Fund for Firefighters and Police Officers
CITY OF SATELLITE BEACH
General Employees' Retirement System
Police Officers' and Firefighters' Retirement System
CITY OF STUART:
City of Stuart General Employees' Pension Board
City of Stuart Firefighters' Pension Board
City of Stuart Police Officers' Pension Board

Oh, I'm sure that's a coincidence.

GEORGIA

Hey, that pot of money was just sitting there, asking for it.

ILLINOIS

Come on, man, we just need one more hit. Just one little more....

Is it any wonder individuals are trying the same ploy? Doesn't work as well for individuals, though. Hmmm.

The old, wise advice is to save early, often, etc. applies to both individuals and states. Sad that it's about as likely to be followed in both cases. The results.... ugly in both cases when not followed.

Anyway, you keep borrowing, who is going to pay the creditors eventually? The way things are going, Caterpillar ain't going to stand for it. Ex-legislators aren't hanging around to see what happens when the debt comes due.

Bill Zettler compares Wisconsin against Illinois pension plans for school administrators. Biggest driver in difference just looks like base salary, though you will see the more indirect items such as retirement age have a huge impact.

Yesterday I mentioned the big hole in the teachers pension plan. I want to point out they made a showing in a post back in September 2010, where I mentioned they looked like they could be entering a death spiral, where they were having to liquidate assets too fast.

KANSAS

Kansas Senate debated pension reforms. Choices: Pay more now or get less later. Here's another choice - both could occur.

LOUISIANA

A financial adviser takes a look at the state of Louisiana pensions. Yeah, employees are likely going to have to contribute more. It's not explicitly stated, but Louisiana employees might not be covered by Social Security (and it needs to be remembered in all these public pensions stories that government employees are sometimes not in SocSec- this has both pluses and minuses on both sides).

If you want to see a Powerpoint presentation on the SocSec/Medicare issue re: LA workers, here ya go.

MAINE

You see, the reason the governor's proposed pension reform can't touch his own pension because, man, he's not allowed to change his total compensation package! What a bummer.

MICHIGAN

In addition to the pension tax thing, the governor is looking at ethics rules for pension boards.

MINNESOTA

Lawsuit from retirees regarding cuts to cost-of-living-adjustments on pensions. Hmmm, think I saw something about that in this post somewhere....current retirees are definitely not safe from cuts, either. The easiest to hit first were new hires, but then current employees are getting hit and now current retirees. No one is safe -- taxpayers will be hit, too.

NEW JERSEY

Rendell kisses Chris Christie's ass for some reason. I'm with John Bury in that not making pension fund contributions is really not a good move for pension plan survival, even though Christie is supposedly using it as leverage to negotiate on pension reform. I kind of get that, but the problem is that the pols don't see the urgency of the contributions.... it's not real pain to them - where's the real leverage?

This is not the kind of leverage I mean.

NEW YORK

City versus State. This worked out well in education in the past, so perhaps Bloomberg may actually get something substantive done here (as opposed to taking away my transfats and salt... come on, eyes on the prize, Bloomie.)

PENNSYLVANIA

A look back at a 2001-pensions boost that is causing a great deal of trouble now.

I have no idea what is going on in Pittsburgh. I'm not sure they do, either - or rather, what went on Dec 31, 2010. I tried to get info on what the last-minute calculation error was (even off the record... I'm big on human error stuff, operational risk, etc. ... just wanted to know!) - never found out.

RHODE ISLAND

Public unions argue their pensions are modest, while the state treasurer warns of plan problems.

You know what? The individual lattes I bought from Starbucks weren't that expensive, if you think about it, as a daily treat. Neither were my individual copies of the Wall Street Journal. Or any number of little things I had to brutally cut a couple years ago to get finances back in order. I don't think anybody is saying to totally zero pensions of current employees and retirees, but there will be various cuts, no matter how modest the current benefits look.

The state gives up trying to yank the pensions of 2 specific crooked ex-employees.

WASHINGTON

Some states aren't waiting to hit the already-retired: Washington looking at altering cost-of-living adjustments to pension payments. Again, constitutionality/legality is brought up. But, of course, both laws and constitutions can get changed.

UK

Public employees warned to get a bit of reality before protesting... to think about how "fair" their pensions look to those paying for them.

Weekend Public Pensions and Public Finance Roundup 26March2011

It has been quite the week for me. So we've got a bit of backup on the pensions stories.

And like the family members that have been puking around here (yes, that's part of the "quite a week"), it's time to puke up these stories!

SOCIAL SECURITY

Possible Dem crack-up over whether entitlements need to be addressed in the short term? This should be interesting.

Charles Blahous notes that Reid's attitude of waiting for catastrophe means an almost-sure destruction of Social Security as it is currently understood.

Which I expect is going to happen anyway due to demographic reasons, but hey.

Speaking of being blind to demographic issues, someone at Daily Kos whining about Mark Warner being okay with raising the Social Security normal retirement age.

GENERAL PUBLIC PENSIONS AND UNIONS

You know who get pretty sweet pensions? Congresscritters. Must be nice to be able to vote for your own raises and retirement benefits. It's not even your money! And you can even enjoy it after the jerks throw you out of office! Whee!

Coverage of the same from leftie site firedoglake -- and you know what? They're right.

Congress shouldn't get pensions at all.

That make you happy, FDL?

The Great Recession exposed the true cost of public employee benefits.

Wikipension is a wiki on public pensions run by NASRA. So, you know, caveat lector.

John Bury asks if those who are pointing out the unfundedness and unsustainability of public pensions are really attacking public employees, or if the people who are puffing on pipe dreams that things are okay are the ones undermining the stability of these pensions (oooh, NASRA is on his list). Hmmm. Related: what's 15% of $0?

For the nth time, looking at the impact of the discount rate on the valuation of public pension liabilities. And the WSJ about the tension between the actuaries who say "Hey, guys, you might need to lower that rate" and the people who would rather not have to put up more money for the promises they're making.

Meredith Whitney walked back her prediction of mass muni bond defaults, and Charles Gasparino gets his panties into a bunch. More on munis.

CALIFORNIA

Basic Q&A on Calstrs, the teachers pension plan in California.

Reaction to the Calpers asset-side corruption continues with proposed gifting rules.

Want a good horror story? How about a San Fran retirement benefit study? Sorry if you have trouble sleeping after that.

Reminder: Calpers decided it didn't need to change anything about its asset return assumption. More on same, also noting that Calstrs is using the same assumption... which it had shaved down from 8%.

Someone in California is on board with my idea of no pensions for pols. Oh, that "someone" is an Assemblyman? Awesome.

Other GOP pension reform proposals in California (with notes on where Gov. Jerry Brown disagrees/agrees....) And more on the GOP filing.

California municipalities don't have a fun time ahead of them, pension cost-wise. Of course, one easy way to deal with it (some of it) is just firing people.

Trying to use pension issues to political gain, for both Dems and Repubs.

Political low-hanging fruit: capping pension benefits. Other low-hanging fruit -- cutting pensions of felons.

The Progressive point of view on California pensions -- not surprising at all.

San Diego talks on pensions not going too well... actually, not going at all.

COLORADO

Denver City Councilmembers think it's a great time for a raise!

FLORIDA

Raising retirement ages for Florida employees. And for Florida employees to contribute more to their pensions.

Part of the pensions battle is the ginning up of class warfare... but not bankers v the "little guy" - but who the big $$ pensioners are. Here's a slice looking at 4 particular people in Manatee County. More on those 6-figure pensions.

The theme of high valuation rates comes up again and again. This one specific for Florida. Thing is, even with these high assumptions, many funds are still in deep trouble.

ILLINOIS

Understatement of the year: Illinois pension crisis eludes easy solutions. Easy to explain -- they've already tried all the easy solutions. They've come up dry. Actually paying for what benefits cost when you bestow them upon employees never seems to have occurred to anybody.

Cook County board president says public employees are going to have to share in financial sacrifices. Good luck with that.

A collection of links to arguments as to whether the pension benefits of current employees can be altered under the current Illinois constitution.

State teachers fund doing really, really poorly. That's one to watch - it's going to get really ugly.

MARYLAND

Maryland workers weren't happy with the governor's proposed pension plan.

Maryland House adjusted governor's proposed plan.

MASSACHUSETTS

People really are stuck on that special $100K pension mark, aren't they?

MICHIGAN

Not a purely pension thing, but it is related. Michigan schools are seeing existence-destroying deficits in front of them. Some population flight (at least some incredible ones from Detroit), as noted in the 2010 Census numbers, may be related.

Here's the deal -- some of the reasonableness of methods of funding and valuing public pensions counts on governments not going out of business... and having a limitless power to tax. That's called into question when you remember that people can leave, in a variety of ways (including the way we all leave -- death. That's why I keep coming back to demographics.)

You can only tax people. A bit difficult to tax the abandoned buildings, when no humans are involved.

But they're trying this pension tax thing. So that will drive away the few people left (who are left only because they can't sell their houses). No, they're not happy about it.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Pension reform to include higher employee contributions in NH.

NEW JERSEY

Back to John Bury on trying to explain the state of NJ pensions.

NEW MEXICO

Legislation to make minimum retirement age for NM employees the scary high level of....55.

OHIO

Cincinnati city council not having much fun wrangling with pension issues.

A good explanation of the deal with having different amortization horizons.

RHODE ISLAND

Trying to yank pensions from crooked officials. Good luck with that, when said crooked pols vote on their own benefits. I prefer my idea of no pensions for pols at all.

Trying to let retired RI employees to return to work. Yeah, double-dipping is so popular elsewhere. I'm sure this will be popular in RI, too.

VIRGINIA

The public employees don't have to be unionized to cause financial difficulties for a state.

CANADA

Crooked pol resigns, keeps his pension. Ain't that the way.

Quebec tries its hand at pension reform.

EUROPE

Noting that one of the PIIGS has its own test of public finances. I doubt this will play out better in Portugal than it has in Greece.

It's already been getting ugly in England.

UK university staff strike over pension reforms.

OECD report on needing to raise retirement ages.

Public Pension/Finance Roundup 21Mar2011

Ah, spring. When one's thoughts turn to monumental governmental debts.

Which reminds me, I haven't done my taxes yet.

PUBLIC FINANCE

Truth: there aren't enough rich people to tax to cover our debt.

No, really, we are broke.

We've really got to signal that the feds aren't going to bail out the states.

SOCIAL SECURITY

If it wasn't clear to you already: the Trust Fund is a lie. Just because it's printed on paper doesn't make it real assets.

Social Security? Don't bother Reid with Social Security. He'd rather wait until it has completely gone over a cliff.

Great/horrible news! We're living longer!

GENERAL PENSION ISSUES

Dean Baker still trying to confuse the issue with irrelevant math. Good luck with that, buddy. I liked the little lie about being underpaid. Mmm.

If you were wondering about what the American Academy of Actuaries has been putting out there on this issue, they've got a handy Actuarial E-Guide, along with a media coverage page.

Get ready for the main event! The 2011 Enrolled Actuaries Meeting! No, really, some interesting people will be talking about public pensions:

Yes fans, it’s a grudge match championship final four. Contestants are Frank Todisco, chief actuary of the Government Accountability Office; Andrew Biggs, former principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration now with the American Enterprise Institute; Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators; and Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities specializing in state fiscal issues.

So get your tickets for ringside seats!

The low-hanging fruit of altering pensions for new hires has already been plucked. Now we're turning to current employees. Wait until they get to current retirees. That will be a hoot.

States need to contribute to pension funds now, after years of shorting the funds...when times were good. So they were being stingy when the tax revenues were good -- you expect them to contribute now? Ha ha.

From Time magazine: budget battle over cost of public employees.

You know where a good place to start cutting would be? Pour encourager les autres? Congressional pensions.

ALABAMA

Higher contributions to pension means lower take-home pay now. It's called trade-offs, guys. Amazing that you're just learning about them now.

CALIFORNIA

Way back on March 11, Jerry Brown said he was ready to deal with public pensions. Really, he's working on some stuff. Really. Looking at stuff. Monty at Ace of Spades takes a look at the state of California's finances, and I really appreciate this line:

Public-sector actuaries are...how shall I put this?...highly motivated to use the most optimistic numbers for their projections.

I'm not a public-sector actuary, but yes, this is hugely contentious in the actuarial community. Those of us who are not public plan actuaries are concerned that this is going to blow up and make the whole profession look bad. It made the top of the strategic risks list this year at the Society of Actuaries, by the way.

But hey, who is going to be checking out the actuaries when there looks like there had been a web of corruption in the massive Calpers pension system. Here's a subscription-only article on the Calpers employees preparing to bolt under new ethics rules.... yeah, that would look great. Here's the blurb:

Many CalPERS investment staffers are looking for new jobs, upset with both proposed ethics rules that they feel go too far and a perception that that all CalPERS employees are disreputable, board member J.J. Jelincic revealed.

More on the fired Calpers CEO. And more on the alleged corruption.
More on the governance of Calpers.

As noted by Monty, Calpers didn't change their discount rate on liabilities, and Ed Mendel wonders how far the funding rules can stretch.

Calstrs guy writes to avoid drastic changes in the pension system. That's definitely self-interest talking, but he has good points (for example, Social Security). That said, Mr. Ehnes -- you need to be putting up your own, workable proposals, because business as usual will not be an option.

San Francisco pensions worse than city claims says report. Here's the report.

One way to fix pensions: massive layoffs.

More of the blame game.

FLORIDA

Longboat Key pensions ranks as amongst worst in state. These guys should stop worrying about who/what is to blame and be more concerned as to if they're going to get what they were promised. Playing the blame game ain't going to get your pension funded or paid.

Just like California, Florida is a bit optimistic about how high those future returns are going to be. Here's a report showing the difference in results at 6 different return assumptions, ranging from 3% up to 7.75%. Gives you a feel for how wide the range of answers can be, and how sensitive it is to that one, crucial assumption.

ILLINOIS

Should part-time elected officials get pensions? Hell, full-timers should get nothing. The people in Illinois are insane.

A video: of the top 100 pension amounts in Illinois, 94 are of educators (I assume this is mostly professors, though).

Back-and-forth on the constitutionality of altering pensions of current employees, and the bottomline of current services versus past services (i.e. pensions). Some balance will occur, and where current services do not win out... people will move. So ultimately, I don't think past service is going to be a winner in the long run. This is why you need to have your pensions funded. Pay-as-you-go is extremely dangerous for the pensioners.

Teachers fund receives full pension contribution. If you consider borrowing money to make a payment a true contribution.

MAINE

When governor was talking of pension cuts, of course he didn't mean his own pension.

MARYLAND

Maryland employees protest total comp changes.

Maryland pension fund to run out in 13 years?

MICHIGAN

I've got a backlog, so here's an old bit on the governor still pushing for a pension income tax back on March 10. This was not popular amongst some groups.

Recent news? It's still unpopular. Surprise, surprise.

This does not inspire confidence in me. Evidently, pols in Michigan are so incompetent, they are passing a law to have other people take over finances where officials have munged up the money. Yay.

NEW JERSEY

As soon as 2013 for NJ pension bust - as said by Veronique de Rugy, and analyzed by John Bury.

Oh goodie. After the SEC already slapped NJ on the wrist for shenanigans, the IRS is reviewing the pension funds.

VIRGINIA

Considering pension plan changes in Alexandria.

WISCONSIN

A look at Wisconsin's most famous bus driver, and how he managed to goose a $50K base salary into a $160K annual pay.

Taxpayers the winners in Walker's battle.

UK

Lecturers going to strike over pension changes. I don't think anybody is going to much care, other than the lecturers. Oh noes! I can't get to calculus class! Oh wait! There's Khan Academy! And I don't have to pay for it! Screw you, prof!

Policemen in UK worry that raising retirement age will create "Dad's Army of officers".

Henry Tapper worries about those working in the pensions world giving pensions a bad name.