In a recent article in the journal Perspectives on Politics, Sarah Anzia and Terry Moe examine whether pension plans that have pension beneficiaries serving on the board are more likely to underfund their pension systems. In the paper, they explain the logic behind underfunded pensions:

Another basic feature of pension politics is that public workers and their unions have incentives to support the chronic underfunding of their own pensions. Due to state statutes, constitutions, and judicial decisions, pensions promised by state politicians are backed by strong legal protections almost everywhere; and public workers thus know they will eventually get what they are promised even if their pension plans are currently underfunded. Indeed, because full funding on a regular schedule would be tremendously costly for state (and local) budgets— crowding out other services, forcing higher taxes, making the true costs of pensions painfully transparent to citizens —public workers and their unions have incentives to prefer that their pension plans be underfunded. Underfunding enables the fiscal illusion that pension benefits are much less expensive than they really are. If public workers and their unions want increasingly generous benefits in future years, they need to convince the public that these benefits are not costly to provide. At the same time, underfunding keeps employee contributions to their own pension funds at low levels; and by keeping contributions by their employers down, they are freeing up public money for other government services, keeping public workers employed—and providing funds for their own salaries and raises.

Each of Missouri’s three teacher pension systems (Kansas City, St. Louis, and Public School & Education Employee Retirement Systems of Missouri (PSRS)) have board members who are also members of the pension system. In St. Louis, the system is currently funded at 78.1%, the lowest funded ratio since 1992. Kansas City’s funded ratio is just 66.2%. PSRS, the system which covers teachers throughout the rest of the state, has the highest-funded ratio, 84.4%. These figures, of course, rely on the pension plan’s rosy assumptions. More conservative (and arguably more realistic) estimates put the funded ratios for each of the plans below 60%.

Overall, support among teachers for Missouri’s teacher pension systems is high. But would teachers continue to support the pension plan if they had to increase their contributions to fully fund their plan? 

The post Why Are Public Pensions Often Underfunded? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s largest teacher pension fund, the Public School Retirement System (PSRS), has already begun to recognize the improved mortality rates of teachers. A PSRS report on contribution rates for 2017-2018 notes that the system has already begun updating the plan’s mortality assumptions:

People are living longer. Mortality is improving, not just in Missouri, but also across the nation. As a result, actuaries are utilizing updated mortality tables, which reflect this trend. PSRS/PEERS conducted Actuarial Experience Studies to compare our actuarial assumptions to the actual experience of the Systems. In other words, are members living as long as we assumed they would, or are they actually living longer?

According to the internal PSRS analysis, people are living longer than the plan had assumed. Adjusting for greater longevity led to a tremendous increase in the plan’s liabilities. According to PSRS board chairman Aaron Zalis, “the revised mortality assumptions better reflect PSRS/PEERS’ actual experience, which results in an increase of over $2.1 billion in liabilities to the Systems.”

Teachers in PSRS are eligible to retire with full benefits after 30 years of service, and there are also early retirement options. This means a teacher may retire by 55 with 30 years of service. Given the new mortality tables from the SOA, a large subset of teachers might be expected to live beyond 90 years old, drawing a pension for 35 years or more.

It is unclear if the SOA’s updated mortality tables for teachers will encourage PSRS or Missouri’s other two pension plans to once again change their assumptions. If they do, we can assume the financial health of the plans will decline.

Let’s process what that means for a second. Some teachers in the past did not put enough into the retirement system to cover their own benefits. As a result, the pension plan will become increasingly underfunded. To make up for this, the plan will have to increase contributions for new members, hold down retirement benefits for retirees, or seek higher returns on investments (Read: “risky investments”). None of this is good for teachers of today or tomorrow.

So teachers, keep this in mind when you sign that contract. You are agreeing to fund the benefits of those who went before you. You may be striking a bargain that you end up regretting.

The post Teachers Live Forever appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The St. Louis Public School Retirement System (STLPSRS) has its own problems—it was just 64 percent funded in 2016, with 5,000 current teachers supporting 4,600 retirees. Teachers have been contributing 5 percent of payroll, with St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) and charter schools making up the rest of what the annual actuarial analysis determines is necessary to keep it funded at least 70 percent. As a result, the bill for SLPS and the charter schools has climbed to over 15 percent and, in 2018, the actuarial analysis determined it needed to be 19 percent. However, difficulty keeping up with increasing costs led SLPS to request that the Missouri state legislature cap their contribution rate at 16 percent. In addition, teacher contributions would climb by one-half percent each year until they reach 9 percent (new teachers in fall 2018 will immediately begin paying 9 percent). According to STLPSRS, that would leave them with a $192 million shortfall within 15 years, so they’re suing SPLS and the St. Louis charter schools.

Economic conditions, unaffordable benefit promises, and an unwillingness to use realistic investment return assumptions have resulted in precarious fund positions, lawsuits, and attempts to balance the books on the back of the youngest workers. Does it have to be this way? No. Many states are moving away from defined-benefit plans (pensions) and toward defined-contribution plans [like 401(k), cash-balance, or hybrid plans]. In some cases, all new employees are placed in the new plans; in others, they can choose between the state defined-benefit plan or the new options.

We’re also seeing teacher retirement benefit innovation from within public education. In 19 states, charter schools may choose whether or not to participate in their states’ pension plans. A recent analysis of charter school participation in five states that make participation optional found that the schools most likely to opt out of the state plan are urban, elementary schools, and those that are managed by charter networks. Most of the opt-out charter schools offer their teachers 401(k) or 403(b) plans, and the teachers are vested in less than one year. The reasons given for choosing this path were mostly that the schools wanted to lower their estimated costs, give teachers a wider range of investment options, and make their teacher benefits more portable. For today’s youngest teachers, this is an important point. Most of them will not meet a vesting period of ten years in one state and, when that happens, they lose the amount that their employer contributed for them.

The good news for teachers and taxpayers is that there is time to protect current and future retirees before the system is bankrupt. The building isn’t on fire yet. However, those of us who pay close attention to this complicated topic are starting to see smoke under the door. It’s time to start talking about how to stabilize Missouri’s teacher pension systems.

The post A Retirement House of Cards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Consider the costs to taxpayers. As of 2018, the plan has assets equal to less than 70 percent of their liabilities and—just to maintain that level of funding—the Missouri state government will have to contribute nearly 20 percent of its total employee payroll to the plan this year. In addition, employees hired after 2011 contribute 4 percent of their paychecks to the system. Imagine a private-sector benefit that cost nearly one-quarter of employee salaries but was considered so sacrosanct as so be untouchable. The hard truth is that we’re going to have to start talking about policy changes aimed at averting a funding crisis. Biggs’s essay explores various options, including grandfathering current plan participants and designing a new system for future employees.

Of course, MOSERS is just one of many public pension plans in the state. The pension systems for teachers aren’t any better.  Teachers argue that they work for low salaries and, in exchange for their sacrifice, they are “taken care of” with generous retirement benefits. But that is only true for those teachers who start their teaching career right out of college and work in the same state for at least twenty-five years. In fact, an analysis of the Missouri Public Schools Retirement System (PSRS)—the plan that covers all Missouri teachers other than those in Kansas City or St. Louis—found that a teacher in the Springfield district would have to work for 26 years in order to hit the “crossover” point at which their total retirement benefit is worth more than what they contributed.

Imagine that! Working for 26 years before your retirement plan is worth more than you put in.

While the PSRS is in better financial health than MOSERS, total annual contributions to the plan are 29 percent of payroll (with 14.5 percent coming from the teacher and 14.5 percent from the school district). This is only likely to get higher because there are now 78,000 teachers (active members) supporting 60,000 retired teachers. In 2000, roughly the same number of active teachers supported just 25,000 retirees. In addition, while the plan is currently nearly 84 percent funded, it has an unfunded liability of more than $7 billion and its administrators continue to assume that the plan will earn a 7.6 percent return on its investments every year, indefinitely. You don’t have to be a math teacher to know those numbers just don’t add up.

The post Public Employee Pensions: Time to Get Our Heads Out of the Sand appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Patrick Tuohey Joins Ruckus Panel To Talk Kansas City Debt and State Tax Cuts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Logic tells us that when people receive benefits that far exceed the value of their contributions and interest, the funds must come from somewhere . . . and they do. They come from teachers who work for fewer years, from teachers with relatively low pay, and from future generations of teachers. The same characteristics of Missouri’s teacher pension system that enable some teachers to enjoy a comfortable retirement also create several forms of inequity that could undermine these plans.

Currently, teachers in Missouri (except in Kansas City and Saint Louis City) contribute 14.5 percent of their salary to the pension system. The district matches that amount, for a total equal to 29 percent of the teacher’s salary. A teacher who leaves before the five-year vesting period ends forfeits the district’s match. But even vesting doesn’t guarantee a teacher will receive full value for their contributions, let alone the district’s match. Because the benefits accrue slowly at the start of a teacher’s career and then rapidly as they approach retirement, a teacher must work more than 20 years just to recoup their own contributions. The teacher who works 15 years and moves because of a spouse’s job in another state, for example, will be leaving money behind that helps fund the generous benefits of others. This is known as intra-generational inequity—within a cohort of teachers, some benefit and others lose.

Another form of intra-generational inequity is the cross-subsidization that occurs between workers with different earnings trajectories. Some teachers (generally in wealthier districts) get very large raises over the course of their careers, but others do not. Teachers who become administrators make even more money. Since pension payouts are based on salary earned in just the final three years of employment, these individuals receive retirement benefits that exceed the amount of their own contributions to the system over the course of their careers.

Others have to make up the difference. These “others” come, in part, from poorer districts and districts with relatively flatter salary schedules. Teachers in these districts pay more into the system than they will get out. Their “excess” contributions go to fund the pensions of the former superintendent making $150,000 a year in retirement.

Even though the pension system shortchanges many teachers, it still does not have enough funds to cover all its expected obligations. Therefore, the system must rely on new teachers to fund the benefits of retired teachers. This is the third type of inequity—inter-generational inequity. As generations of teachers contribute less than they receive in benefits, unfunded liabilities grow. In turn, future generations are asked to contribute more to the system. We have already seen individual contributions to PSRS grow from 10 percent in 1995 to 14.5 percent today.

Defenders of Missouri’s teacher retirement system will be quick to tell us that the system is well-funded, over 80%. (We can quibble about this calculation another time.) They will reiterate that the system is well-liked by teachers and claim that retirees are doing well in this system. To make that argument is to miss the point of this entire article: unless we tie benefits to contributions, the pension system will continue to favor some at the expense of others.

The post Pension System’s Generous Benefits Come from the Pockets of Others appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As the authors of the KCPSRS analysis suggest, “long-term pension fund success is based on all three levers working together.” Those levers are contributions, benefit design, and investment design. As we’ve noted before, the plan is already shifting to riskier assets in an attempt to secure higher rates of return on investments. The system will likely keep the benefits design the same. So, what could they change in order to shore up the system? There is only one lever remaining: contributions.

Currently, teachers and their employers each pay 9 percent into the system for a total of 18 percent. An additional 12.4 percent is put into Social Security. The authors of the KCPSRS analyses suggest the system may need to increase contribution rates if they want to avoid insolvency. They project what the impact would be of increasing the contribution rate to 22 or 26 percent. Of course, increasing contributions will help the financial health of the system. It will also cost teachers.

Keep in mind that the contribution rate was set by the legislature at just 15 percent from 1999 to 2012. The legislature allowed for fluctuation in the contribution rate, but capped the maximum amount at 18%. In other words, increasing the contribution rate to the 22 or 26 percent highlighted in the KCPSRS report would not only require an act of the legislature, but possibly an act of a higher power. It is an increase that may be unprecedented in Missouri pension history.

Increasing contributions but not benefits means that employees of the future will get significantly less benefit from the pension system than their predecessors. They will, in effect, be paying for the benefits of the past.

The real question is how much are employees willing to pay for the same or a reduced benefit? Teachers today may be willing to put their 9% into the system, but would they be willing to put 11%? How about 13%? At what point do teachers decide they would rather have their contributions in a defined-contribution account, rather than an account that goes to pay for someone else’s benefits? 

The post How Much Are Kansas City Teachers Willing to Pay for their Pension? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When Michael Rathbone and I released our report, “Betting on the Big Returns: How Missouri Teacher Pension Plans Have Shifted to Riskier Assets,” in 2015, we stated that pension plans should be more transparent about funding possibilities. We wrote:

To improve transparency, lawmakers could require pension plans to forecast assets using multiple assumptions on investment returns. What would the funding ratio for each of these plans be if returns are 4 percent or 6 percent instead of 8 percent? This is something policymakers should know as it would allow them to choose the best way to structure contributions so that downside is minimized and that these plans can be adjusted to adapt to any unexpected downturns that may occur.

The report is exactly what we called for. It illustrates how the forecasts of the health of the system will be affected by varying contribution rates and investment return assumptions. Here and in a follow-up post I will present some of the findings from the KCPSRS report.

The main takeaway is that the system could be in serious trouble within the next two decades. Currently, the system is 64% funded with $349 million in unfunded liabilities. Next year, the plan expects to pay out $85 million in benefit payments. In contrast, the system will only collect $33 million in pension contributions. This is because the participants in the plan are trending older and older. Today, more than three-fourths of the members of KCPSRS are retirees:

The tables below present projections for the funded ratio over 10 and 20 years under different scenarios that take into account various rates of return and contribution rates. Currently, active members of KSPSRS and their employers each pay 9 percent of salary into the system for a contribution rate of 18 percent.

The best-case scenario within 10 years is that the system will improve to an 86% funded ratio. If the plan doesn’t make any changes to contribution rates and receives the expected rate of return of 7.75 percent (the actuarially assumed rate), the funded ratio will drop to 53%. In 20 years, the funded ratio could continue to drop to less than 40 percent.

But here’s the real kicker, the authors write that “The probability of insolvency is 2% at the 10 year horizon and increases substantially to 42% at the twenty year horizon.” You read that right. Within 20 years there is a real possibility that the KCPSRS could be insolvent. We hear all the time that these defined-benefit plans are great for retirees. Well, not if they are bankrupt.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how the system may address the issue of unfunded liabilities.

The post Kansas City Teacher Pension Faces Possibility of Insolvency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For those unfamiliar with the current pension debate, here’s a crash course: A pension plan’s funding ratio is the value of its assets (contributions to date) divided by the present value of its liabilities (discounted sum of its future payments). Between today and when the future payments are due, contributions will be put in and investment returns will be realized on the plan’s assets. Of course, the future contributions necessary to ensure a fully funded plan depend on the returns that are realized. In other words, if a plan’s returns fall short then contributions will have to fill in the gap. Current General Accounting Standards Board practices allow a pension fund to discount its future payments at the rate that fund managers expect returns to achieve, but in recent years economists have argued against valuing a plan’s funding ratio this way due to the simple fact that while investments might reach the expected goal, the funds for retiring employees must be paid.

Many economists note that current estimations don’t guarantee goals will be met, and that the safer way to estimate how well-funded a plan is involves discounting future payments as if they came from risk-free investments (i.e., treasury bonds). Mercatus listed each state’s funding status, first according to the state’s assumed investment return rate and then according to the risk-free rate, revealing a staggering gap. The graph below shows the difference between the ratios using the assumed rate and the risk-free rate for each state.

When determining a state’s funding ratio, the two methods produce an average difference of 34%. Missouri’s funding ratio drops 38%, with a difference of 64.84 billion (yes, that’s billion with a B). To be clear, this chart does not mean taxpayers will have to make up all or part of the difference, but the discrepancy in valuation shows the drastic potential costs taxpayers could be burdened with if investment returns don’t live up to their current expectations.

The types of investments that pension plans hold are up to the discretion of their managers, but these numbers are no small chunk of change. If states are going to guarantee retirement funds, they may want to consider a risk free measurement system that will ensure they are prepared to pay employees what is promised.

The post What’s $65 Billion between Friends? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Interest rates for bonds, which are considered low-risk investments, have dropped considerably. Pension systems set investment return goals. For the Public School Retirement System of Missouri (PSRS), the assumed rate of return is 8 percent. The low interest rate on bonds has forced PSRS and other pension systems to chase higher returns by taking on greater investment risk.  Timothy Martin of the Journal writes:

Thanks to rock-bottom interest rates in the U.S., negative rates in other parts of the world, and lackluster growth, investors are becoming increasingly creative—and embracing increasing risk—to bolster their performances.

To even come close these days to what is considered a reasonably strong return of 7.5%, pension funds and other large endowments are reaching ever further into riskier investments: adding big dollops of global stocks, real estate and private-equity investments to the once-standard investment of high-grade bonds. Two decades ago, it was possible to make that kind of return just by buying and holding investment-grade bonds, according to new research.

As Michael and I noted in our report, it doesn’t really matter why pension plans are taking on riskier assets; it simply matters that they are. The changing nature of investments has made pension plans riskier. It is incredibly important for pensioners and policymakers to be aware of this. As a safeguard, we suggest policymakers should increase transparency:

To improve transparency, lawmakers could require pension plans to forecast assets using multiple assumptions on investment returns. What would the funding ratio for each of these plans be if returns are 4 percent or 6 percent instead of 8 percent? This is something policymakers should know as it would allow them to choose the best way to structure contributions so that downside is minimized and that these plans can be adjusted to adapt to any unexpected downturns that may occur.

It is time to prepare ourselves for what might happen as a result of taking riskier assets. After all, it is the teachers and eventually the taxpayers who will be held responsible if these plans do not meet their expected rates of return.

The post Pensions Are Taking on Riskier Investments and Putting Retirees’ Money In Jeopardy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Direct patient care

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association

Consequences of a minimum wage hike in Saint Louis

Show-Me Institute welcomes Michael McShane

Uber and the Saint Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission

Riskier assets for teacher pension plans

School choice: Planting seeds for success

Newsletter October 2015.pdf

The post October 2015 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some background: When Springfield police and fire department employees won increases to their pension several years back, they agreed to pay for it themselves through employee contributions. However, the cost of the benefit has ballooned as the number of people paying into the pension fund has shrunk. Because the pension is a defined benefit plan, growing unfunded liabilities now put the entire pension fund at risk. In this case, taxpayers may end up paying for a benefit they were told they wouldn’t have to cover.

Springfield is not the only municipality facing a defined benefit pension with growing unfunded liabilities. According to SMI’s 2016 study on the funding of Missouri’s state and local pension liabilities, the average public pension could be between 48 and 59 percent underfunded. According to that same study, total unfunded liabilities for Missouri’s public pensions could be as high as $89 billion.

In theory, a defined benefit pension plan can be fully funded and operated in a sustainable way. But in practice, elected officials tend to promise more than they can deliver, and defined benefit pension systems can run into problems years or even decades after they were put into place.

For cities that want to avoid issues like the one facing Springfield, making the switch to a defined contribution plan might be the way to go. With a defined contribution pension, the city would make regular contributions into an employee-managed retirement account throughout the employee’s career. When the employee retires, he or she would draw from the money deposited into that account plus or minus any investment gains or losses. Underfunding situations like the one in Springfield would be impossible, because a defined contribution pension is necessarily and by definition fully funded.

A defined contribution pension benefit is not a cure-all, because benefits already accrued will have to be paid out pursuant to the older defined benefit plan. But switching to a more sustainable benefit system might keep a potential problem from becoming a catastrophe. 

The post Springfield Taxpayers on the Hook for “Employee-Funded” Pension? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The problem our home inspection revealed was below the surface. It wasn’t causing any noticeable problems today. Down the road, however, it could have caused a fire, resulting in irreparable harm.

Recently, Michael Rathbone and I performed an inspection of our own—not on a home, but on Missouri’s teacher pension systems. Similar to my home inspection, we found something troubling just below the surface. Missouri’s teacher pension systems have shifted to riskier assets. This shift has not caused any noticeable problems as of today; and like my reversed polarity, may not ever cause any harm. Of course, an increase in risky assets also increases the possibility that the house could burn down.

Imagine if upon receiving my home inspection, I had yelled at the inspector, “You just hate houses!” As ridiculous as that might seem, that is exactly the reaction Michael and I have received. In response to a recent op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader, in which we called for increased transparency so that the problem could be monitored, we were vilified. One pensioner even claimed that we dislike public education. The author of the response to our op-ed then went on to list several facts that were not germane to the point we made.

Somehow it seems our message has been lost. Therefore, I want to reiterate the point of our paper, “Betting on the Big Returns: How Missouri’s Teacher Pension Plans Have Shifted to Riskier Assets,” one more time. Missouri’s pension investments are becoming more risky. In other words, the house isn’t on fire, but it is becoming more flammable. It would be wise to monitor the investments more closely and plan for these increased risks. 

The post The House Isn’t On Fire, but It Is at Greater Risk appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Most recently, Michael Rathbone and I pointed out that Missouri’s teacher pension systems have shifted to riskier assets. From this study, we concluded that lawmakers “should be aware that these pension plan returns are based on increasingly risky assets and acknowledge that fact when planning for the future.” In particular, we suggested that the plans should forecast assets based on various expected rates of return.

On August 7, PSRS Executive Director M. Steve Yoakum issued a three-page response to the paper. Mr. Yoakum claims that our study “provides a limited and somewhat biased view of PSRS/PEERS and the Systems investment strategy,” but in the rest of his response he acknowledges several of the points we made.

Mr. Yoakum acknowledges the shift away from fixed-income investments and toward higher-risk investments, and goes on to justify this shift by citing lower returns on the former and greater opportunities “in other areas of the investment universe.” This is essentially the point we were making: equities and alternative investments have historically delivered higher returns than fixed-income investments, but they also carry greater risk.

Our paper states that current teacher and school district contributions do not cover the existing obligations, meaning that pension plans must rely on investment returns in order to meet their obligations to members. Mr. Yoakum’s response: “Only if we exclude income from investments is this true.” It is difficult to describe this as anything but a restatement of our point.

We stated, and Mr. Yoakum’s response acknowledges, that public employee pension systems have moved toward riskier assets than they held in the past. Much of Mr. Yoakum’s response is devoted to explaining this change—which is important— but the point of our paper was not to question the reasons behind the shift. Our goals were instead to document this trend and to endorse the recommendations of the Pew report that we cited repeatedly in our own study, namely that “Government sponsors can demand better reporting of future expected costs and the associated downside risks, and then use this information to make decisions about ways to deal with poor outcomes, should they occur.”

We remain committed to these recommendations, and we stand behind every word in our study. 

The post SMI Responds to PSRS on Teacher Pension Fund Risk appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This common proverb argues that one cannot expect to achieve anything without taking some risk. The amount of risk one is comfortable with differs from person to person. However, if the thing at risk is the retirement savings of thousands of public school teachers, it would be wise that managers of these teachers’ money take as few risks as possible.

Unfortunately, these managers are going in the opposite direction and placing riskier and riskier bets in order to finance teacher pension obligations. As my colleague James Shuls and I point out in our new essay, “Betting on the Big Returns: How Missouri Teacher Pension Plans Have Shifted to Riskier Assets,” each of Missouri’s public teacher pension plans have moved away from investing in safer assets such as fixed-income securities and toward riskier investments such as equities and various alternative assets.

As we state in the paper, more risk isn’t inherently a bad thing since investors are compensated for that risk with higher returns. Still, what will happen to taxpayers if some of these risky assets fail to deliver as expected? James and I cover this and more in our paper, so please give it a look.

The post Show-Me Institute Presents: Betting on the Big Returns appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Betting on the Big Returns: How Missouri Teacher Pension Plans have Shifted to Riskier Assets appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

HB 485 seeks to address this problem by shifting new hires into a hybrid pension plan. A hybrid pension plan is one that contains elements of both a defined benefit (DB) plan and a defined contribution (DC) plan.

Read the full testimony: .

The post On The Proposed Hybrid Pension Plans For Missouri Government Employees appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This behavior is taking place in Missouri. For example, in the late 1990s, the Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees Retirement System (MPERS) had 42 percent of their assets in fixed income and cash. Equities and alternative investments such as real estate made up the rest. Now, MPERS has 22 percent of its assets in cash and fixed income.

The pensions are doing this “to deliver higher long-term returns in order to keep funding costs low . . .” In fact, in one of our previous policy studies, Andrew Biggs noted this phenomenon when examining how Missouri’s public pensions value their liabilities: “U.S. public sector plans, by contrast, have taken on greater investment risk, because doing so allows them to lower the accounting value of their liabilities and put off difficult decisions such as raising contributions or lowering benefits.”

I don’t have a problem with a pension plan seeking higher returns, but if these investments don’t deliver as hoped, then Missouri taxpayers will be on the hook to make up the shortfall. That is why I favor retirement plans such as defined contribution plans or cash balance plans that limit the exposure of the taxpayers to investments failing to generate expected returns. Hopefully, we can make a shift before one of these risky bets fails to pay off.

The post Breaking: New Study Supports Old Show-Me Institute Study appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the full testimony: .

The post Missouri Public Pensions: Their Funding Status And Roadblocks To Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How about using some of that surplus to pay off the state’s pension liabilities? The Missouri State Employees Retirement System (MOSERS), for example, has an unfunded liability of more than $3 billion (it is really much larger than that, but for the sake of argument, let’s go with the official numbers). Even if the state moved to a defined contribution (DC) plan immediately, the current liabilities in the pension remain.

Unless there is some kind of economic miracle between now and June 30, the surplus will not be $3 billion. However, a little money invested now can yield large savings in the future. Even using a 4 percent discount rate, a $100 million investment today will be worth more than three times as much in 30 years. It is the same principle as putting a larger down payment on a house. The larger up-front payment will mean lower total spending on the mortgage as a whole. That is a savings for future taxpayers.

A state surplus would be a good thing, but the state has an obligation to use any surplus responsibly. Helping to make sure our pensions are funded is a worthy goal and one worth pursuing.

The post Better Bottom-Line Fuels Budget Battle appeared first on Show-Me Institute.