nevada public employee retirement system

Nevada Lawmakers Debate Bill to Switch New Hires into 401(k) Plan

Public employee groups, businesses and lawmakers all hotly debated a Nevada bill this week that would make major changes to the state’s pension system.

The measure under scrutiny is Assembly Bill 190, which would close off the state’s defined-benefit system and funnel all new government hires into a hybrid plan that more closely resembles a 401(k).

The bill was proposed in late February by Assemblyman Randy Kirner [R].

More on how the pension system would look under the bill, from the Review-Journal:

Kirner said there would still be a defined benefit element to the plan worth 6 percent of an employee’s salary that would be paid by the public agency. This piece of the plan is intended to account for the fact that Nevada public employees do not pay into Social Security, he said.

The remainder of the retirement plan would be a defined contribution plan, with 6 percent being provided by the state or local government agency and another 6 percent coming from the employee.

For police and fire, the defined contribution rate would be 9 percent each from the employer and employee.

At the hearing this week, state businesses were supportive of the measure.

But public employee groups argued against the bill, saying the changes would make it harder to recruit talented workers.

Tina Leiss, a top official at the Nevada Public Employee Retirement Systems, also spoke against the bill.

The bill is still in committee. Read the text of the bill here.

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Nevada PERS Pokes Holes in Study Claiming Public Pensioners Make More in Retirement Than They Did On Job

Officials from the Nevada PERS are disputing a think tank report that claimed public pensioners were making more money in retirement than they did while working.

The report was produced by the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

But Nevada PERS says the findings were based on a small sample size that renders the results meaningless.

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

A retirement system official said Thursday a report showing that some public employees who retire collect more in pension benefits than they did while working was based on less than 2 percent of beneficiaries.

The analysis also does not reflect changes to the retirement plan made in 1985 that reduced pension payouts, said Tina Leiss, executive officer of the system.

The conclusions in the report issued by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in Las Vegas, do not account for the vast majority of the members and retirees of the Public Employees’ Retirement System, she said.

“It appears that the analysis was based on a review of 790 retirees whereas there are currently 49,179 retirees (not including survivors and beneficiaries) receiving benefits from the system,” Leiss said. “Over the last 3 fiscal years, approximately 12 percent of those retiring in those years did so with 30 or more years of service while approximately 88 percent did so with less than 30 years of service.”

NPRI officials have used the analysis as evidence of the need for reforms to the public employee retirement system, but Leiss said the analysis is not representative of the benefit structure in place for almost ail current members of the system. Benefits were reduced in 1985 from 90 percent to 75 percent of average compensation for newly hired public employees, she said.

The executive vice president of the NPRI responded:

Victor Joecks, executive vice president at NPRI, said PERS likes to use averages to make its case, which is why the analysis looking at those retiring with 30 years of service is so important. Those with 30 years or more can begin collecting their pensions in their 50s while private-sector workers have to put in much more time to collect Social Security, he said.

Public employees in PERS do not participate in Social Security.

“What it shows is the PERS system has a big inequity in it,” Joecks said. “If you only work for five years or 10 years it’s not a very good system for you.”

Including a 401(k) type of element to the public pension plan would work better for younger workers who don’t plan to make a career in public service because it stays with the employee, Joecks said.

Read more on the think tank report here.

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Nevada PERS to Release Member Data After Years-Long Legal Fight

A three-year legal battle concluded this week when the Nevada Public Employment Retirement System (NVPERS) agreed to release extensive data on its members, including benefits, in compliance with a state Supreme Court order from April.

The data to be released, according to a NVPERS notice (also embedded at the bottom of this post):

-Date of hire

-Date of termination

-Date of retirement

-Retirement option

-Employer name

-Contributions to system

-Service credit

-Beneficiary information

-Gross benefit amount

-Base retirement amount

-Adjustments to base

-Post retirement increase amount

-Retirement stop date and reason

-Marital status

-Fund status

-Gender

The court order forces a stark change in policy for a retirement system that had kept a notoriously tight grasp on its member and retiree records since the 1970s.

But a state Supreme Court order—an order issued last December but not clarified until this month—made it clear that, while individual retiree records will remain confidential, any reports based on that data produced by NVPERS are not confidential. In the words of the court:

Where information is contained in a medium separate from the individuals’ files, including in administrative reports generate from data contained in individuals’ files, such reports or other media is not confidential merely because the same information is also contained in individuals’ files.

That means NVPERS now must turn over what it calls its “actuarial feed”, or the detailed reports—containing substantial amounts of member data—it gives to its actuarial consultants. The consultants use the data to determine benefits and make projections.

More on the “actuarial feed” from WatchdogWire:

The agency described the “actuarial data feed,” which now is to be made public, as “an extensive report always thought to be confidential between the System and our actuarial consultant protected through a confidentiality agreement which has now been determined in part to be public information.”

Geoffrey Lawrence, director of research and legislative affairs at the Nevada Policy Research Institute, said the data-feed information is vital if researchers are “to build a clear understanding about how public pension liabilities have accrued in Nevada.

…

Under Nevada public records law, personal information remains confidential. Thus, PERS emphasized, it “will NOT release any Social Security numbers, contact information (addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses), bank information, or minor child information.”

This legal fight began in 2011, when the Reno Gazette-Journal filed a public records request asking NVPERS to release data on its members, including benefit payments and work history.

NVPERS denied that request, a move consistent with the System’s long-standing interpretation of the Nevada Public Records Act—the interpretation being that all individual member and retiree records are confidential.

The Gazette-Journal subsequently filed a petition to bring the case in front of a District Court. The court eventually ruled that NVPERS did indeed have to turn over the names of its retirees and the benefits they receive, among other data.

NVPERS appealed that decision all the way to the state Supreme Court, which issued its ruling in December. But NVPERS requested another hearing, held in April, to have the court clarify exactly what records it wanted NVPERS to disclose.

The results of that hearing were released just this month.

The data to be released by NVPERS can eventually be found on Transparent Nevada.

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