The race for Kentucky’s governorship is now underway, but the candidates – Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway – have so far barely touched on one of the state’s key issues: it’s underfunded pension system.
In fairness, it’s only been hours since Matt Bevin was announced as the victor in the GOP primary, and both campaigns are just beginning to ramp up.
But neither candidate has made pension funding a main issue of their campaign.
More on what the candidates have and have not said, from WDRB:
Matt Bevin, the presumptive Republican nominee after an apparent razor-thin primary win, offers more than Democrat Jack Conway does, but neither’s platform is proportional to the magnitude of this problem.
Conway told the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce that the most important thing we could do to address the pension crisis was to “grow our economy and create more good-paying jobs.” He also promises to work with both parties to make “the contributions called for by the actuary in order to get our pension system healthy again.”
Bevin pledges an outside audit, putting future state hires in a private sector-style 401(k) plan, and examining all options for moving existing employees into such plans. He also says, “All current employees should be required to make increased pension contributions in order to help secure their own pensions and make the system more financially sound.”
Simply stated, Conway offers next to nothing while Bevin offers more than he can deliver. Neither offers answers sufficient to actually address the problem.
The Kentucky Employee Retirement System’s Non-Hazardous Pension Plan is currently 22 percent funded.
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