Pennsylvania pension reform | Pension360

Video: Pennsylvania Lawmakers Host Town Hall On Pension Reform

State Reps. Seth Grove (R-Dover Township) and Mike Tobash (R-Schuylkill/Berks) hosted a town hall meeting on state pension reform in early August.

But the video has just recently hit YouTube, and it’s worth watching if you’re interested in the various proposals currently sitting in the Pennsylvania legislature.

Tobash is a legislative appointee to the Public Employee Retirement Commission; he is also sponsoring a pension reform bill that would switch new hires into a hybrid-style 401(k) plan.

Pension360 covered Tobash’s reform proposal last week.

Pennsylvania Lawmaker Proposes Trash Tax to Ease Pension Pains

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has made pension reform a major part of his re-election platform, but has had little luck finding lawmakers to help him push through proposals.

One lawmaker put a new idea in the ring Thursday, although it’s probably not what Corbett had in mind.

Reported by the Morning Call:

State Rep. David Milliard thinks there may be pension gold buried in the state’s landfills.

On Thursday, the Republican from Columbia County floated a bill that would impose an additional $3 tipping fee on waste haulers to reduce school districts’ rising pension costs.

The additional fee would generate an additional $51 million and be put into a new pension-only fund controlled by the state Treasury, according to a memorandum Milliard published seeking co-sponsors to his bill. The Additional Commonwealth Contributions to School Districts Account.” to be used to help districts lower pension costs. The money would be distributed to districts, but not charter schools, on a prorated basis.

The proposal is meant to ease pension costs for school districts, which are subject to rising contribution rates designed to help cover the state’s pension funding shortfall. From the Morning Call:

Mandatory pension payments for school districts rose about 4.5 percent to 21.4 percent of payroll this fiscal year. The rising rates are based on Act 120, which went into effect in 2011. The law sets a increasing, fixed rates the state and school districts must pay each year to cover back pension debt, which is now approaching $50 billion. The state and school districts are having trouble keeping up with those payments even though they are lower than they would be if the law were not in effect.

So far, no other lawmakers have sponsored the bill.

Pennsylvania Pension Reform Not Likely As Election Draws Closer

The election for Pennsylvania governor draws closer, but pension reform seems farther away than ever.

Gov. Tom Corbett has made pension reform his campaign cry. But he remains down in the polls as the urgency to pass pension reform dwindles around him—both from inside and outside the capitol. ABC 27 reports:

A typical late-August day and all is quiet at the Capitol.

But this silence is not golden for a governor who has criss-crossed the state begging/cajoling/shaming/pleading with lawmakers to give him pension reform.

“We have a bill out there right now that I want the legislature to come back and finish,” Governor Tom Corbett said a week after the legislative exodus in early July.

The governor has poster boards calling pensions a $50 billion problem that will burden future generations of Pennsylvanians.

There is disagreement among lawmakers on how to fix pensions and disagreement as to whether there’s even a problem.

“The word crisis is being used for ideological reasons, not any mathematical reasons,” insists Senator Rob Teplitz (D-Dauphin).

Teplitz, and most Democrats, believe the problem was created by the state failing, for years, to pay what it owed toward pensions and now it’s time to pay the consequences and pay up.

“It does feel more painful,” Teplitz said. “But just like any family that delays making its credit card payment, sooner or later you gotta make that payment.”

There’s no urgency among lawmakers because there’s not urgency among voters, said one pollster. Education funding is on the mind of the electorate, not pension reform. From the Philadelphia Daily News:

[Pollster Terry] Madonna said that for voters the pension-funding increase is “not something they relate to,” while Pennsylvania school districts raise local property taxes, lay off staff and curtail programs.

Other high-level observers agree that voters aren’t as engaged on pension issues. From ABC 27:

“It’s something that the public still hasn’t been able to get its arms around,” said Lowman Henry, a conservative commentator with the Lincoln Institute. “As a result, you’re not seeing that type of collective pressure on lawmakers that is going to push them to make what are very difficult decisions in an election year.”

The latest poll shows Corbett trailing his Democratic challenger, Tom Wolf, by 25 points. Wolf currently holds 49 percent of the vote, while Corbett holds 24 percent. Twenty-five percent of voters remain undecided.

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home/mhuddelson/public_html/pension360.org/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 3712