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16 04, 2015

Switching from pension to 401(k)-type plan would cost taxpayers billions more

2015-04-17T00:48:20-07:00April 16th, 2015|Categories: Defined Benefit Plans|Tags: , , , |

Former [Pennsylvania] state representative Steve Nickol has urged legislators to keep taxpayers in mind by not embracing proposals that would make the state’s pension problems worse, according to a news release from the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Nickol, a former member of the Public School Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. He formerly served as a state representative in the Hanover area. […]

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31 03, 2015

The State of Pension Funds in Pennsylvania

2015-03-31T20:18:56-07:00March 31st, 2015|Categories: Pension Funding|Tags: , , |

Below is testimony before the House State Government Committee, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Chairman Metcalfe, Representative Cohen, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on the subject of pension reform in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. My name is Gary Wagner and I am a professor of economics at Old Dominion University. Pension reform is an extremely important topic for the fiscal health of the commonwealth and for the more than 700,000 active and retired [...]

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27 01, 2015

The real pension problem

2015-01-27T22:28:32-08:00January 27th, 2015|Categories: Pension Funding|Tags: |

Clearly, Pennsylvania is facing a snowballing pension bill, expected to mushroom from $52 billion today to more than $65 billion by 2021, to cover retirement benefits promised to more than 800,000 state and public school employees. It’s also true that a handful of local governments — primarily large and midsize cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton — have retirement programs that are underwater and have been for quite some time.  […]

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9 06, 2014

Sen. Joe Scarnati determined to boot elected state officials out of pension system

2014-06-09T21:11:31-07:00June 9th, 2014|Categories: Pension Reform|Tags: , |

If no other pension reform gets done before lawmakers break for the summer, the highest-ranking state senator is calling for the Legislature to at the very least act to move all elected officials in the legislative, executive and judicial branch out of the state’s defined benefit pension plan. Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, is dead serious when he says pension reform is a must-do for the Legislature before it wraps up its business for the summer. [...]

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3 06, 2014

Pension Reform Could Save Pennsylvania $11B, Claims Actuary

2014-06-03T18:33:29-07:00June 3rd, 2014|Categories: Pension Reform|Tags: , , , |

Reform of the Pennsylvania public pension system, scrapping its defined benefit (DB) plan and implementing a hybrid set-up, could save the state’s taxpayers over $11 billion over the next 30 years, according to an actuarial report. The proposed reform suggests closing its existing DB plans to new employees and instead enrolling them in a hybrid of both DB and defined contribution (DC) systems. “This hybrid plan proposal does provide for future cost savings as new employees participate under the [...]

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29 05, 2014

Hybrid pension plan for school, state employees projected to produce $11 billion in savings over 30 years

2014-05-29T21:17:39-07:00May 29th, 2014|Categories: 401(k), Defined Benefit Plans|Tags: , , |

A proposed pension reform plan that would change the design of the state and school employees’ retirement plans would eventually erase the pension systems’ $47.5 billion debt and introduce a mandatory 401k-style retirement-savings plan for new public employees. The hybrid defined benefit-defined contribution plan would produce a projected $11 billion of savings in taxpayers’ contributions to the systems over the next 30 years, according to an independent actuarial study commissioned and approved by the Public Employees Retirement Commission this morning. Other [...]

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15 05, 2014

Pension expert offers five-step plan for reform

2014-05-15T21:30:12-07:00May 15th, 2014|Categories: Defined Benefit Plans|Tags: , |

Legislative proposals to reform Pennsylvania’s severely underfunded pension system would not provide a long-term fix, but only “punt” costs to future generations, according to a pension expert. Richard Dreyfuss, an actuary and senior fellow with the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think tank that has called for pension reform, met Wednesday with the editorial board of the Times-Tribune, a sister paper of The News-Item in the Times-Shamrock Communications family. […]

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24 02, 2014

2013 was a lucky year for county employees’ pension plan

2014-02-24T21:39:03-08:00February 24th, 2014|Categories: Retirement|Tags: , , |

Those who manage Washington County’s defined-benefit pension plan hoped to see the value of the fund rise by at least 17.7 percent last year. They bested their benchmark by 2.3 percent, it was announced Thursday at a quarterly meeting of the county Retirement Board. The total value of the portfolio at the end of 2013 was $134,640,553, and it increased by another $300,000 as of Thursday morning. […]

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