SENTINEL RETIREMENT BENEFITS UPDATE

Almost two years ago, the retirement plan’s actuary said that average annual earnings of 7% were a more realistic target than the 7.75% PERS had been using. PERS continues to knowingly use an inflated projection for future returns on its investments.

Nor is that the only delay that is designed to obscure how bad things really are. Lawmakers didn’t want to increase the taxpayers’ annual share of the pension plan by another $350 million or so on the eve of the November election. The delay had nothing to do with PERS’ balance sheet. It’s now scheduled to take effect in July 2024. The increase was supposed to take effect this October, but the PERS board - under political pressure from the Legislature - agreed to put off the increase for nine months. Last December the PERS board voted to increase the employer rate by 5 percentage points - the ninth rate hike since 2005 and the largest in history. PERS is a terribly expensive retirement plan whose main response to its chronic structural imbalances is to keep raising the amount that taxpayers have to kick in to sustain it.

SENTINEL RETIREMENT BENEFITS UPDATE

Or maybe those who do the analysis for lawmakers have a conflict of interest, since they, too, benefit from the plan as it is generously constructed.Įither way, the PEER Committee’s latest update on the financial soundness of the Public Employees’ Retirement System is better at describing the problems than it is at offering solutions. Maybe it’s not the job of a legislative watchdog group to propose reforms to the unsustainable public pension plan in Mississippi.

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