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Think Tank: New Jersey Pension Benefits Aren’t That Lucrative

One of the criticisms leveled at New Jersey and its underfunded pension system – and one of the main justifications used to cuts in worker benefits – is that New Jersey’s public employees receive more generous pension benefits than their peers in other states.

But a left-leaning think tank released a report Wednesday that cast doubt on the generosity of New Jersey’s pension benefits relative to other states.

From NJ.com:

New Jersey’s public employee pension plans ranked among the least generous of top public pension plans in the country, according to a report released today.

The study shows New Jersey’s pensions are more modest than 94 of the country’s 100 largest plans.

[…]

The study considered whether pension plans protect retirees from rising inflation, how benefits are calculated and how much employees contribute to their plans.

New Jersey fell in the bottom half in all three fields, which Stephen Herzenberg, the Executive Director of the Keystone Research Center, who authored the report, called the three most important dimensions of generosity.

[…]

Workers kick in 6.93 percent of their pay — and that number is rising — while employees contribute less in more than half of the other systems, according to the findings.

New Jersey’s retirees do not receive yearly cost-of-living adjustments to offset inflation, unlike 69 other plans included in the study that offer some protection from inflation. Retirees are suing to restore the cost-of-living increases that Gov. Chris Christie suspended as part of a 2011 pension reform package.

The state’s formula for calculating pension payments also uses a low multiplier — 1.67 percent — that lands it in the bottom quarter of plans.

The report notes that Garden State workers also receive some of the lowest pension benefits, but those were not factored into the rankings.

On average, pension benefits are $26,000 a year. Local government employees receive less on average, $16,000, while teachers receive more, $40,000. State employees collect $25,000.

Read the full think tank report here.

Photo: “New Jersey State House” by Marion Touvel. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Pension Funds Sue Chris Christie Over State Contribution Cut

New Jersey’s three largest pension funds filed a lawsuit against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday for slicing the state’s required pension contribution by $900 million in 2014.

The complaint can be read here.

Kolivakis on Post-GASB New Jersey and Pension Fund Compensation

Last week, the funding ratio of New Jersey’s pension system dropped 20 points. That’s because the state began measuring funding under new GASB accounting rules, which requires using market asset values instead of actuarial ones.

This new way of measuring liabilities puts New Jersey in an even deeper hole. But as Leo Kolivakis of Pension Pulse points out, this is a hole that New Jersey dug for itself – with poor pension governance, below-median investment performance and by diverting state pension payments to other parts of the budget.

Here’s Kolivakis’ take on New Jersey’s situation, the new GASB rules and compensating pension fund staff.

__________________________

Originally published at Pension Pulse:

You can read more on GASB’s new rules for pensions here. I note the background for these changes:

On August 2, 2012, the GASB published accounting and financial reporting standards that improve the way state and local governments report their pension liabilities and expenses, resulting in a more faithful representation of the full impact of these obligations.

The guidance contained in these Statements will change how governments calculate and report the costs and obligations associated with pensions in important ways. It is designed to improve the decision-usefulness of reported pension information and to increase the transparency, consistency, and comparability of pension information across state and local governments.

For example, net pension liabilities will be reported on governments’ balance sheet, providing citizens and other users of these financial reports with a clearer picture of the size and nature of the financial obligations to current and former employees for past services rendered.

In particular, Statement 68 requires governments providing defined benefit pensions to recognize their long-term obligation for pension benefits as a liability for the first time, and to more comprehensively and comparably measure the annual costs of pension benefits.

The new GASB rules will impact all state and local pensions, not just New Jersey. This will be another important measure to determine whether U.S. public pensions are indeed on solid footing.

As for New Jersey, back in March, I commented on its pensiongate scandal and didn’t mince my words:

The article doesn’t capture the real problem at U.S. public pension plans, namely, lack of proper governance. You basically have politicians appointing political bureaucrats in charge of public pensions, paying them peanut salaries and getting monkey results. There are exceptions but this is typically how U.S. public pension funds are mismanaged.

And who benefits most from this? Of course, the Paul Singers, Dan Loebs, Steve Schwarzmans, and all the rest of the who’s who managing hedge funds and private equity funds. It’s one big alternatives party — for the big boys. Everyone is making a killing except for these public pension funds, praying for an alternatives miracle that will never happen. These alternatives managers and their sophisticated marketing are milking the public pension cow dry. They basically have a license to steal.

And why not? There are plenty of dumb institutions listening to their useless investment consultants who are more than happy to recommend the latest hot hedge fund or private equity fund to their ignorant clients. It’s a frigging joke which is why the Oracle of Omaha is 100% right when he warns us that the worst is yet to come for U.S. public pensions.

As far as New Jersey, Gov. Christie has done some good things on pension reform but a lot more needs to be done. Double-dipping pensioners are bleeding New Jersey dry. Unions can bitch all they want about rich alternatives managers meddling in their state’s politics but they must accept shared risk of their plan, which includes raising the retirement age and cuts in benefits as long as the plan is chronically underfunded. The state of New Jersey, however, should make sure it tops up its public pension plan which it neglected to do for years (the major cause of the pension deficit).

The biggest factor explaining the pension deficit in New Jersey and other states is how successive state governments failed to make their pension contributions, using the money to fund other things (no doubt in an effort to buy votes).

But there are plenty of other factors that didn’t help, like lack of sensible pension reforms, lousy investment performance and poor governance.

On this last point, Michael B. Marois of Bloomberg reports, California Pension Fund Bonus Payouts Climb 14% From Prior Year:

The $300 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension, paid $9 million in bonuses last fiscal year, up 14 percent from a year earlier as earnings exceeded benchmarks.

The fund, known as Calpers, paid $8.7 million in bonuses to investment staff in the year ended June 30, and almost $300,000 to four non-investment executives, according to data provided by the system. The rewards are based on three-year performance verses a benchmark, as well as the earnings of each asset class and individual portfolios, said spokesman Brad Pacheco.

“These awards are part of the overall compensation we provide to recruit and retain skilled investment professionals needed to ensure success of the fund,” Pacheco said.

Public-pension funds are recouping investment losses suffered during the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009, which wiped out a third of Calpers’ value. Still, the crisis left U.S. pensions short more than an estimated $915 billion needed to cover benefits promised to government workers. Taxpayers have been asked to make up the shortfall.

The biggest bonus earner was Ted Eliopoulos, the chief investment officer who recorded a $305,810 bonus last year in addition to his $412,039 base pay.

Top Job

That bonus was paid when Eliopoulos was acting chief investment officer after his predecessor Joe Dear died in February from cancer. Prior to that, Eliopoulos headed the fund’s real estate portfolio. He now earns $475,000 in base pay after he was tapped for the top investment job in September.

Eliopoulos announced in September that the fund was divesting all $4 billion it had in hedge funds, saying they were too expensive and too complicated and not worth the returns.

The pension fund earned 18.4 percent last fiscal year, 12.5 percent a year earlier and 1 percent in 2012. It estimates it need 7.5 percent annually to meet its long-term obligation to pay benefits promised to state and local government workers.

Calpers is still short $103.6 billion needed to cover those promises based on market value as of June 30, 2012, the latest figure that was available. That shortfall is up 19 percent from a year earlier.

The California fund says it must grant bonuses to help compete with the pay that employees could make if they went to work on Wall Street. Pacheco said spending money on in-house investment management saves about $100 million a year that otherwise would be paid to Wall Street in fees.

Wall Street bonuses, which rose 15 percent on average last year to $164,530 — the highest since 2007 — may climb again as a result of payments deferred from previous years, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said last month.

Four executives outside the Calpers investment office were paid a total of $295,930 in bonuses last year, the fund said. Anne Stausboll, chief executive officer, got $113,679; Chief Actuary Alan Milligan earned $75,748 and Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Eason was paid $89,703, almost double a year earlier.

Calpers paid a total of $7.9 million in bonuses in the prior fiscal year.

Compensation is part of pension governance and if you ask my expert opinion, CalPERS’ compensation is fair and accurately reflects the market, their performance and their ability to attract and retain professionals to manage billions. The only thing I would change is base it on four-year rolling returns, like they do at Canadian public pension funds.

All this hoopla on compensation at U.S. public pension funds is totally misdirected. I happen to think most U.S. public pension fund managers are grossly underpaid, just like I think some Canadian public pension fund managers are grossly overpaid (read my comment on PSP’s hefty payouts and the subsequent ones on its tricky balancing act and its FY 2014 results which were likely padded by skirting foreign taxes).

Getting compensation right is critical to the long-term health of any public pension fund but supervisors of these funds should make sure they’re paying their senior investment staff properly based on benchmarks that truly reflect the risks they’re taking. I believe in paying people for performance, not for taking dumb risks to trounce their silly benchmark (that contributed to Caisse’s ABCP disaster which the media is still covering up).

New Jersey Pension Panel Faces “Big Test”

When Chris Christie created the Pension and Benefit Study Commission, the skeptics were quick to point out the politics of the decision.

The panel was formed to recommend reforms for the state’s pension system; but when Christie announced his appointees, some thought its real function was to act as a political shield for the governor, who has said benefit cuts are likely on the horizon for state workers.

The panel is set to release its latest report in November. The editorial board of the New Jersey Star-Ledger says the report will be a “big test” for the panel:

The panel is expected to issue its report within a month. If it offers a lopsided solution that relies entirely on a second round of benefit cuts, its report will be dead on arrival. Democrats would not consider a solution like that, and for good reason.

[…]

Democratic leaders say they will not consider more benefits cuts until Christie restores full payments. That can’t be done without a tax increase, which Christie finds equally repugnant.

The job of this panel is to find the political sweet spot, to come up with a repair plan that both sides might accept. If it fails that test, its report will gather dust and its mission will have failed.

In the end, Democrats will have to accept some new benefit cuts. The state’s fiscal condition is much worse than anyone expected when this deal was signed in 2011, thanks mostly to the sputtering economy. If New Jersey had simply matched the average state since the Great Recession, it would have raised roughly $3 billion more in annual revenues and the 2011 reform would probably have survived.

Democrats can’t expect taxpayers to make up the entire shortfall if there are reasonable cuts to be made. One example: In its preliminary report, this panel noted that the state’s health benefits remain generous, and that some might qualify as “Cadillac plans” under Obama care. The state also treats early retirees more generously than Social Security does. The panel, no doubt, will have a long list of soft spots like this.

Christie needs to face reality, too. He can’t expect public workers to bear the entire burden when the state that has shortchanged these funds for so long, and when Christie himself broke his commitment to do better. And after years of fiscal crisis, there is simply no spare money in the treasury. That means a tax increase is needed.

This is a bipartisan panel, but Christie made all the appointments, a big mistake that undercuts its credibility. If its members want to have impact, they will have to declare their independence by offering a balanced repair plan.

If that leaves both sides unhappy, then the panel will have done its job by telling the hard truth about this unforgiving math.

The panel’s first report can be read here.

Christie’s 2017 Challengers Already Forming Pension Policies

New Jersey’s next gubernatorial election is still three years away – but Christie’s potential Democratic challengers are already meeting with stakeholders and gearing up their pension policies.

Those potential challengers include Senate President Stephen Sweeney, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, former U.S. ambassador Philip Murphy and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop.

They all have one thing in common: they believe pensions will be a big issue in the 2017 election, and Christie will be on the wrong side of it.

From NorthJersey:

Although the contest is still three years away, several Democrats are already conducting a fierce, behind-the-scenes pre-primary.

And, for the time being, the best way of wooing unions representing police, firefighters and thousands of government workers appears to be to trumpet one of labor’s bottom-line demands: Unless Governor Christie reverses course and makes his promised payments to the pension system, any further discussion of more changes, including a call to scale back workers’ benefits, is dead in the water.

“The employees are paying their share, [Christie] should do the same,’’ said state Senate President Stephen Sweeney.

Christie’s reform push — a public tour over the summer and creation of the 10-member panel of experts who issued last month’s report — looks like it may run smack into the Democratic Party’s solidarity with public employee unions.

That unity will most likely be seen in the Senate, where Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat, has the power to derail Christie’s agenda when it suits him. Sweeney has cooperated with Christie on a whole range of deals — including the hotly contested 2011 reforms that forced public workers to pay more for pension and health care benefits, raised the retirement age and cut cost-of-living adjustments. Sweeney is not cooperating this time.

Other potential Democratic candidates in the 2017 race are also lining up behind the union position.

“We have no credibility as a government unless we stand up and meet our obligation to the pensioners,” said Philip Murphy, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Germany and led the Democratic National Committee’s fundraising from 2006 to 2009. “I think it’s very hard to go back to the well until the state can prove that it’s a reliable partner in this.”

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, who opposed the first round of benefit changes in 2011, also toed the union line. “Why would anybody believe assurances about any new set of promises about the pension fund when the promises that were made under heavy skepticism to begin with have not been lived up to?”

Unions were angry when Christie cut the state’s pension payments and used the money to plug budget shortfalls elsewhere. Union leaders said that workers were doing their part by contributing money, but the state was shirking its responsibility. From NorthJersey.com:

“We can’t take anyone seriously who talks about fixing the pension system without putting in additional resources,’’ said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, director of governmental relations for the New Jersey Education Association, the powerful teachers union. “It’s ridiculous to think a pension system can survive without regular [state] contributions. Our members have made those contributions.”

According to a recent report from the New Jersey Pension and Benefit Study Commission, the state if shouldering $37 billion of pension liabilities. That number has tripled since 2005.

NJ Newspaper: We Don’t Trust Christie’s Pension Panel

The Daily Record released a scathing editorial today denouncing the efficacy of New Jersey’s Pension and Benefit Study Commission and the motives behind its creation.

The editorial claims that Christie put the panel together to act as a political shield when he eventually cuts worker benefits – which Christie has said will be a major part of the reforms that will eventually be proposed.

From the editorial:

Union and Democratic leaders are already denouncing the commission’s report as a sham designed from the start to do little more than bolster Christie’s claims that benefit cuts are the only answer. We can’t blame them. Remember how eager Christie was to declare success when a reform agreement was reached in 2011? That supposedly set New Jersey’s pension system on the road to solvency.

But now we’re being told it’s not even close. What’s happened since then? New Jersey’s economy has continued to lag on Christie’s watch. The governor then reneged on one of the state’s pension payments into the system that was part of that original agreement. That only exacerbated the long-term financial burden and — not coincidentally — furthered Christie’s own argument that more benefit cuts are unavoidable.

This is yet another case of Christie putting his own presidential ambition over the interests of New Jerseyans as he bows to national conservatives. The right wing doesn’t like unions, and will applaud any effort by governors and other elected officials to gut union influence. Slashing and burning public-worker benefits is a means to that end, and Christie is carrying out that task with dedication.

[…]

…When the commission delivers its recommendations, expect Christie to repeatedly cite them as “bipartisan” evidence of his wisdom in support of whatever cutback plan he puts forth. Democrats will ridicule the entire process as merely serving Christie’s will. And we’ll be no closer to arriving at some important decisions, in large part because Christie isn’t much worried about what New Jerseyans think anymore. He’s got bigger plans.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

Time For New Jersey To Face the “Bitter Truth”, Says Pension Panel Chairman

The chairman of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission, the panel assembled by Chris Christie to address the state’s pension problems, has published a column today in the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

In it, Thomas J. Healy writes about the “bitter truth” about pensions that people will have to swallow: that Christie’s previous reforms “did not come close” to fixing the problem and now the options for fixing the state’s pension system “are uninviting”.

From the column in the Star-Ledger:

It’s time for New Jerseyans to swallow some bitter truth about our state’s public employee pension and health benefit systems.

The commitment of elected officials over two decades to offer benefits that were unaffordable, coupled with the failure of the state to make required pension contributions when they were due, has landed New Jersey on the edge of a gaping fiscal cliff. Unless the crisis is dealt with firmly and comprehensively, it is certain to become more dire in the period ahead.

[…]

Concerted efforts have been made during the past 10 years to fix the problem. However, significant pension plan reforms in 2010 and 2011 have not come close to correcting two decades of underfunding by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Trenton.

Fortunately, awareness of the need to actively address the problem cuts across both parties. Former Gov. Jon Corzine has acknowledged that “current benefits are financially unsustainable.” And, in the course of naming a 10-member bipartisan commission on Aug. 1 to study the problem and recommend possible long-term solutions, Gov. Christie warned that “if we don’t do more, and we don’t do it now, the state will be forced to make harder choices in the future.”

While this bipartisan understanding is helpful, it doesn’t diminish the complexity of the job ahead, as outlined in the just-released status report of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission. Indeed, the options for making the public employee pension and health benefits systems fiscally viable are uninviting. Employees have already made concessions, and a tax increase of the size necessary to fund the escalating cost of benefits (in a state which already has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation) is unrealistic. So is any effort to divert revenues from an already tight state budget.

The commission’s second report will propose specific recommendations for reforming New Jersey’s pension system.

The first report, which came out last week, presented an overview of the fiscal situation surrounding pensions but didn’t provide ideas for reform.

John Bury: 4 Things The New Jersey Pension Panel Failed To Say

Over at Bury Pensions, actuary John Bury covers New Jersey pension developments as close as anyone. And there’s been a lot to talk about lately, as the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission just released their first report last week.

But what wasn’t in the report is just as important as what was. While the report served as a great primer on how New Jersey’s pension mess came to be, it fell short on some counts.

Here’s John Bury’s take on what was left out.

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By John Bury

The report did a good job of piecing together available public information but anyone could have done that. What this panel of experts was supposed, and failed, to do is bring their knowledge of the truth of the situation to the general public. Perhaps some did not possess that knowledge and others who did wimped out but here is what should have been in the report:

Actuaries lie

A 54% funded ratio and $37 billion shortfall for the state portion of the New Jersey pension sounds bad enough but people should be aware that these figures are generated by actuaries whose sole responsibility to their politician clients is to keep contribution amounts low. Ask yourself how a plan returning 16.9% in trust earnings when it is assuming 7.9% worsens their shortfall. It’s primarily because of a flaw in basic actuarial math which is not being adjusted for since getting it right is not what public plan actuaries are paid for when right means higher contributions. Then there is the smoothing canard that the panel completely ignores, quoting the $44 billion actuarial value of assets as real rather than the $39.5 billion market value.

Politicians cheat

$14,9 billion in skipped ARC payments under Christie in cahoots with the legislature who not only get to decide how much they put in but they also get to brag that their selected mini-contributions are the full statutorily required amounts though they get to define what is statutorily required.

Benefits are protected

Hinted at on page 18:

One of the reasons the reforms described above have had little impact on the unfunded liability is that many of them do not apply to all current employees.

And the reason many recent reforms are not applied successfully (witness the COLA fiasco) is that Christie Whitman in 1997 exchanged constitutional protection of those benefits for the ability to reduce contributions to a desired level (i.e. nothing). That needs to be admitted and reforms must include either paying for all those promised benefits in full or coming up with some strategy to get public employees to agree to reduce their benefits voluntarily.

Hybrid plans won’t work here

Though a Defined Contribution plan is the only type of plan that governments, run by political considerations and without independent funding discipline, should be allowed to sponsor moving new employees into these plans would only worsen the underfunding since a valuable input into the ponzi scheme New Jersey currently runs (employee contributions) would be shut off and new hires who are typically younger could wind up getting even higher benefits than under an age-weighted defined benefit system. In the private sector the shift to cash balance plans worked because older employees could be forced (or tricked into) accepting them. It would take a massive amount of ‘creativity’ and will to work the same magic in the public sector where employees have more leverage and politicians are not bargaining with their own money.

New Jersey Pension Commission Releases First Report

It came a little behind schedule, but the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission released its preliminary report yesterday.

This first report was all about identifying and detailing the causes and current state of New Jersey’s pension funding shortfall. As such, no recommendations were made for fixing the system.

Although the report, notably, did not name Chris Christie, it did lay a portion of the blame on politicians for creating the pension mess. From NorthJersey.com:

The report in part blames politicians for failing to properly fund the pensions and siphoning surpluses during robust years resulting in a $37 billion unfunded liability in the state pension funds.

“While high benefit levels are one driver of unfunded liabilities, the lack of state contributions is a critical contributing factor,” the report states. “Put simply, if the state cannot find the economic means and discipline to consistently fund its pension obligations, the system will fail. The funding decisions over the last twenty years are telling examples of bipartisan contribution to fiscal distress.”

The report also said that Gov. Christie’s 2011 pension reforms didn’t sufficiently address the system’s problems.

Matt Arco of NJ.com put the report’s talking points more succinctly:

1. The looming unfunded liability is massive

2. Retiree health care costs are massive (and unpaid for)

3. Blame can be spread across the board

4. Failure to fix the problem will cost millions more

5. The 2011 reforms weren’t enough

The full report can be read here.

New Jersey Credit Rating Cut By S&P; Record 8th Downgrade Under Christie

Credit rating agency S&P has downgraded New Jersey’s credit rating by one step, to A. The downgrade comes just 5 days after Fitch downgraded the state’s rating.

Notably, the state has been downgraded eight times under Chris Christie, the most under any governor in the state’s history.

Reported by Bloomberg:

The reduction to A, the sixth-highest level, with a stable outlook follows a Sept. 5 downgrade by Fitch Ratings. It gives New Jersey the same general-obligation grade as California, which is on track for an upgrade as revenue exceeds Democratic Governor Jerry Brown’s estimates. Only Illinois has lower ratings than New Jersey among U.S. states.

“New Jersey continues to struggle with structural imbalance,” S&P analyst John Sugden in New York said in a statement today. “The governor’s decision to delay pension funding, while providing the necessary tools for cash management and budget control, has significant negative implications for the state’s liability profile.”

Christie, a 52-year-old Republican in his second term, broke his promise this year to make $2.5 billion in extra pension payments in fiscal 2014 and 2015 to help trim unfunded obligations. He has called for more changes to the plan as costs for employee benefits crowd out other state spending.

[…]

New Jersey’s pension deficit, which reached $53.9 billion in 2010 after a decade of skipped payments and expanded benefits, fell to $36.3 billion with Christie’s changes. It then grew to $47.2 billion in 2012 as he made only partial contributions.

For fiscal 2014, which ended June 30, Christie contributed $696 million, less than half the planned $1.6 billion. Superior Court Judge Mary C. Jacobson, ruling in Trenton on June 25 in a lawsuit filed by state worker unions, said Christie was within his power to reduce the payment because he faced a fiscal emergency.

All three of the major rating agencies – Fitch, Moody’s and S&P – have downgraded New Jersey’s credit rating in 2014.

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