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Illinois Teachers’ Fund Returns 17 Percent; Unfunded Liabilities Still Growing

The Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System announced over the weekend its investments had returned over 17 percent in fiscal year 2013-14.

As a result, the system’s funding ratio improved – climbing from 42.5 percent to 44.2 percent.

But unfunded liabilities grew, as well.

From Reuters:

The funded ratio for Illinois’ biggest public worker pension fund improved slightly in fiscal 2014 due to strong investment returns, but the system still ranks among the worst funded major retirement systems, the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) said on Friday.

The system for teachers and other school workers outside of the Chicago Public Schools reported that its funded ratio rose to 44.2 percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30 from 42.5 percent. While that marked the first improvement since fiscal 2006, the funded ratio remains far below the 80 percent level considered healthy.

“An improved funded ratio is always good news, but it doesn’t mean by any means that the financial problems at TRS have been solved. We cannot invest our way out of this problem,” TRS Executive Director Dick Ingram said in a statement.

The retirement system said its investment rate of return was 17.4 percent, net of fees. But its unfunded liability grew by 10.51 percent from $55.73 billion at the end of fiscal 2013 to $61.59 billion.

“TRS members still face a fiscal day of reckoning in the future unless a dramatic improvement is seen over time in the funded status,” Ingram said.

TRS manages $45.3 billion in assets for its nearly 400,000 members.

Arizona’s Gubernatorial Candidates Both Vow To Address Pension Woes, But Specifics Hard To Come By

Both of Arizona’s gubernatorial candidates (Republican Doug Ducey and Democrat Fred DuVal) have said they will try to find a solution to the funding problems plaguing the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS). The system is only 49 percent funded.

But neither candidate offered much in the way of specifics during interviews with the Arizona Republic’s editorial board. From the Arizona Republic:

Neither Republican Doug Ducey nor Democrat Fred DuVal, during interviews with The Arizona Republic, offered specific plans to fix the troubled Public Safety Personnel Retirement System.

Both said they would try to develop a consensus among employees, employers and lawmakers to find a solution for the $7.78 billion unfunded liability that has put a crimp on local communities’ ability to hire police officers and firefighters.

DuVal and Ducey say working with all groups involved in the pension systems is the only way to avoid litigation, which thwarted pension reforms the 2011 Legislature enacted.

[…]

DuVal said PSPRS is financially unsustainable, but court rulings have made it clear that state constitutional changes, which would require voter approval, may be needed for reform.

“We want to approach this in a way that has long-term solutions,” DuVal said. “We need to make sure everyone is involved. We are looking at broad participation to avoid litigation.”

Ducey said basically the same thing.

“The biggest concern is to look at the unfunded liabilities,” Ducey said. “There are a number of reforms, and lot of different options. I want to talk to leaders of all the organizations.”

He also said he would embrace recommendations by a pension-reform task force he led as state treasurer, including limiting retirement benefits to base-salary compensation. That proposal would prevent using lump-sum payouts of vacation and sick time and prevent the artificial inflation, or “spiking,” of pensions.

The Arizona PSPRS saw its funding ratio drop dramatically over the course of fiscal year 2013-14 – from 58.7 percent to 49.2 percent. It isn’t the only Arizona retirement system in trouble. From the Arizona Republic:

The funding ratio for the Corrections Officer Retirement Plan dropped from 69.7 percent to 57.3 percent, and there are $1.1 billion in unfunded liabilities. The average pension is $26,299.

The funding ratio for the Elected Officials’ Retirement Plan dropped from 56.5 percent to 39.4 percent and there is a $482 million unfunded liability. The average pension is $50,338.

[…]

The plan for elected officials, which includes judges, is in the worst shape. It has less than 40 percent of the money it needs to pay for current and future pension obligations. The fund may run out of money in 20 years if no significant changes are made. That plan is closed to newly elected politicians, and is expected to eventually cease, but additional public funds may be needed.

PSPRS is shouldering $7.78 billion of unfunded liabilities. Since 2010, it has reduced its assumed rate of return from 8.5 percent to 7.8 percent.

Mississippi PERS Reports Boost in Funding Ratio, Drop in Liabilities

Actuaries for the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) reported during a board meeting Tuesday that the system’s funding ratio had risen from 57.7 percent to 61 percent during the course of fiscal year 2013-14, which ended on June 30.

The actuaries also reported that unfunded liabilities had dropped for the first time in at least 10 years.

From the Associated Press:

With stock market gains replacing steep losses in the accounting ledger, Mississippi’s main public employee pension fund posted stronger results last year.

Actuaries reported yesterday to the board of the Public Employees Retirement System that the funding percentage — the share of future obligations covered by current assets — rose to 61 percent as of June 30 from 57.7 percent on the same date in 2013.

The unfunded accrued liability, the amount of money that the system is short of being fully funded, fell last year for the first time in at least a decade, from $15 billion to $14.4 billion.

The system now projects that at current contribution levels, it will take 29.2 years to pay off the unfunded liability, down from a 32.2-year projected repayment period in June 2013.

PERS Executive Director Pat Robertson said the improvement supports the argument that the pension system can reduce its shortfall with time.

“I think it means that as we’ve indicated in the past, that time and patience will help get us back on the right path,” she said. “Our focus is long-term and our investments on a long-term basis will sustain the plan.”

The improvement comes, in part, because the fund’s 5-year smoothing period ended in fiscal year 2013. From the Associated Press:

The improvement stems from recent stock market gains as well as the end of an accounting period covering losses from the 2008-2009 stock market meltdown.

Like most pension funds, actuaries smooth out gains and losses over five years, booking 20 percent of the gain each year. Parceling out gains and losses is meant to reduce the volatility of market returns. In the 2012-2013 year, the system booked the last of five $1.05 billion losses from the 2008-2009 stock market meltdown.

Without that drag on results, the smoothed, actuarial value of the fund went up to $22.6 billion. Without such smoothing, the fund was in reality worth $24.9 billion at June 30, aided by an 18.7 percent investment gain in the previous 12 months. The fund has now achieved above its long-term goal of 8 percent gains in four of the last five years, giving it a tail wind for actuarial purposes in coming years, even if the stock market continues its recent decline.

“Even if we had a loss this year, we have some reserves from those gains that just happened,” actuary Edward Koebel told the board.

PERS will not be decreasing contribution rates for employees or governments as a result of the funding improvement. That’s because contribution rates were frozen by the PERS board in 2012 in an effort to pay down the system’s shortfall more quickly.

PERS manages $25.4 billion in assets.

Fitch Slaps Jacksonville With Credit Downgrade Over Pension Obligations

Fitch warned Jacksonville earlier this year that a credit downgrade was waiting in the wings if the city didn’t move to control its rising pension costs.

Fitch has now followed through on the threat, downgrading several city bonds from AA+ to AA, and others from AA to AA-.

In doing so, Fitch becomes the second agency to downgrade Jacksonville’s credit in the last four months. Moody’s did so in June.

From the Jacksonville Daily Record:

Fitch Ratings has downgraded several of Jacksonville’s bonds, citing pension risk and lack of reform as key drivers to its negative changes.

In all, about $1 billion in bonds and commercial paper notes were downgraded. Three bonds went from AA+ to AA, while one bond and the city’s commercial paper went from AA to AA-.

Regarding the city’s unlimited tax general obligation, its pension and liability profile is more consistent with an AA rating as opposed to an AA+ rating, the agency explains in its notes. Ratings affect the city’s interest rates on borrowing.

“The rating action focuses on credit risk associated with the city’s pension plans, which have a large collective unfunded actuarial accrued liability and rapidly escalating funding costs,” it states.

The city’s police and fire pension plan’s unfunded liability is more than $1.6 billion. The annual cost of paying into the plan is a projected $154 million for fiscal year 2014-15, up $6 million from the year before.

Chief among Fitch’s concerns is the city’s stalled pension reform efforts. One Fitch analyst said reform has been “very slow to evolve”. From the Florida Times-Union:

Fitch Ratings voiced concerns Monday about whether Jacksonville can actually achieve pension reform that will strengthen the city’s financial outlook.

[…]

After noting that some City Council members have filed amendments seeking to change a pension bill introduced by Mayor Alvin Brown, Fitch’s report questions “when or if” the City Council will vote on that bill.

Fitch also points out that Brown’s bill doesn’t identify a “definitive long-term funding source” to pay for a $400 million piece of Brown’s proposal — a criticism also lodged by several City Council members and the Jacksonville Civic Council, a high-profile business group.

[…]

Fitch put Jacksonville on notice earlier this year it would downgrade the city’s ratings if pension reform isn’t achieved. Brown filed his pension bill in June but it went on the back-burner during the summer budget hearings. The City Council conducted its first session last Wednesday to discuss the bill.

The Mayor’s Office has said the question-filled meeting was productive. But Fitch’s analysts were “concerned that it was not the progress they were after,” said city Chief Financial Officer Ronnie Belton, who talked to the analysts last week.

“I think the message from them is, ‘We’re looking for you to deal with the No. 1 issue you’ve got,’ ” Belton said.

Read the Fitch report here.

Chart: Is The Actuarially Required Contribution A “Joke”?

Yesterday, Pioneer Institute Senior Fellow Iliya Atanasov called the annual required contribution (ARC) the “biggest joke of the costing and funding process”. He said in a column at Public Sector Inc:

The biggest joke of the costing and funding process is the so-called annual required contribution (ARC) that the actuarial valuation is supposed to determine. In reality, there is nothing “required” about the ARC – most jurisdictions can contribute absolutely nothing and face no legal repercussions, at least in the short run. And when state and local governments don’t make the ARC, they rarely look at, let alone disclose, the long-term cost of postponing the payment and how much more expensive the benefits become as a result. Just look at Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which owe some $300 billion in unfunded liabilities between them, or at the sad condition of once glorious cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit, teetering towards or already in bankruptcy.

As the above chart shows, the country’s public pension funds are indeed failing to pay 100 percent of their ARCs. Often, states and municipalities make full payments to smaller systems but fail to make consistent, meaningful contributions to larger systems. Another chart for more context:

Kentucky Pension CIO Talks About “Challenging Start” To Fiscal Year As Investments Decline

The first quarter of fiscal year 2015 ended last month, and investment performance at the Kentucky Retirement Systems came in below benchmarks for the period.

Including October, KRS investments are down 3 percent since July 1.

The system’s chief investment officer, David Peden, revealed the performance data at a board meeting on Tuesday.

Reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Hedge funds and other alternative investments are the only assets currently gaining value for the Kentucky Retirement Systems, however controversial they might be otherwise.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2015, ending Sept. 30, its investments declined 1.41 percent overall, worse than the comparable benchmark, David Peden, chief investment officer for Kentucky Retirement Systems, or KRS, told the Public Pension Oversight Board on Tuesday.

“It’s been a challenging start to the year,” he said. “October hasn’t helped any. It’s actually a little worse — down by about 3 percent if you include October.”

After the meeting, Peden said KRS’ worst losses were in public equities — traditional stocks and bonds, especially those based in other countries. By contrast, he said, hedge funds were up 0.74 percent, private equities were up 1.49 percent and real estate was up 2.03 percent.

[…]

Experts consider KRS the weakest state retirement system in the country. It faces $17 billion in unfunded liabilities due largely to inadequate state payments for most of the past 15 years, starting during Gov. Paul Patton’s administration.

[…]

Jim Carroll, co-founder of the advocacy group Kentucky Government Retirees, told the board that KRS needed a massive infusion of cash, possibly from a pension bond that would require legislative approval. KRS now has so little money that even a booming stock market isn’t enough to prop it up, Carroll said.

“Over the last three years, the fund has exceeded its assumed rate of return and yet lost a staggering $952 million,” he said. “In other words, positive market performance has become disconnected from asset growth. The run-out date — the date when the fund would be depleted if there were no more assets coming in — has shrunk to two years and 10 months.”

KRS investments returned 15.5 percent in fiscal year 2013-14.

Would An Elected Comptroller Ease New Jersey’s Pension Pain?

Fixing New Jersey’s pension system has been the talk of the state lately, and as far as ideas go, all the usual suspects have been proposed: cutting benefits, making full actuarial contributions, transferring new hires into a 401(k)-style plan, etc.

One idea that is rarely discussed is the creation of a model similar to New York: the appointment of a comptroller to oversee and have authority over the pension system.

Under this model, the comptroller would take significant authority out of the governor’s hands regarding pension matters.

This hypothetical comptroller, if he wished, could have overridden Chris Christie’s decision to cut the state’s pension payments. More analysis from NJ Spotlight:

While New Jersey governors and legislatures have been cutting, skipping, or underfunding pension payments for the past 20 years, New York does not have a similar pension crisis because its elected state comptroller has the power not only to set the actuarially required pension payment each year, but also to require Albany’s governor and Legislature to fully fund it, according to a senior Moody’s Investors Service analyst.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is required to calculate the state’s pension payment by October 15 to give the governor’s office and legislative branch sufficient time to include his calculation in the budget for the fiscal year that begins the following June 30. That amount is then required to be paid into the state’s pension systems on or before March 1 — three months before the end of the fiscal year.

“In New York, the state comptroller is responsible for the entire pension system,” Robert Kurtter, Moody’s Managing Director for U.S. Public Finance, explained at a forum on pension funding at Kean University last week. “The comptroller’s power to require full pension funding has been litigated and upheld by New York’s highest Court of Appeals.

“The New York Legislature tried to underfund the actuarially required contribution, but couldn’t,” Kurtter said. “It’s a two-edged sword for New York. Their unfunded liability is low, but they don’t have a choice, even when revenues are down.”

The soundness of New York’s pension system is one of the principal reasons that the state enjoys a AA1 bond rating from Moody’s — one of 30 states in the top two rating categories — while Illinois and New Jersey are the nation’s fiscal basket cases, the only two states with lower-tier single-A bond ratings. While New York was upgraded this year, New Jersey’s bond rating has been downgraded a record eight times under Gov. Chris Christie.

But creating a comptroller position and giving it authority is a politically tricky process – because it involves not only amending the constitution, but also taking away significant power from the state’s governor. From NJ Spotlight:

New Jersey’s governor has more power over state spending than any other governor. New Jersey’s governor has unilateral authority to determine the revenue projections that determine the size of the budget — which Christie has consistently overestimated, as previous governors have when it met their political needs.

New Jersey’s governor also has the ability to make midyear budget cuts without seeking legislative approval — as Christie did when he retroactively changed the pension formula in March and cut $900 million in Fiscal Year 2014 pension payments in May.

Adding an elected state comptroller or state treasurer or establishing an ironclad requirement that the state make its actuarially required contributions to the pension system annually would require a constitutional amendment. The Democratic-controlled Legislature would need the governor’s signature to pass a new law, but not to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot — a strategy it used to bypass Christie on the minimum wage last year and on guaranteed funding for open space this fall.

Last spring, Christie cut $2.4 billion in payments to the pension system and diverted it to help balance the state’s general budget.

Judge: Scranton Can’t Tax Commuters To Fix Pensions

Scranton’s pension funds are around 23 percent funded and less than 5 years away from collapse, according to an audit released last month.

As such, the city had planned to start raising money from a new revenue source: a tax on commuters.

But a judge shot down that idea on Wednesday. From Reuters:

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday rejected the cash-strapped city of Scranton’s bid to solve its municipal pension woes with a new commuter tax.

The 0.75 percent tax on commuters’ earned income was supposed to have gone into effect on Wednesday. It would have affected about 23,000 people and raised about $5 million annually, according to city officials.

Senior Judge John Braxton of Philadelphia, who heard the case in Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas, said the city could not impose a commuter tax unless it levied the same tax on residents.

The lawsuit to stop the tax was brought by a group of aggrieved commuters who would have paid it. The city can appeal the ruling.

[…]

The funded level of its pension fund for firefighters sank to 16.7 percent as of Jan. 1, 2013, from 41.7 percent just four years earlier, the audit found. Scranton’s police pension fund is just 28.8 percent funded, and its municipal employees pension is at 23 percent. Above 80 percent is generally considered healthy.

Scranton’s pension and benefit costs have been growing by an average 15 percent annually since 2012, budget documents said.

In light of the judge’s decision, Scranton is considering other options. Those ideas include, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune:

Wait to see if the state amends Act 47:

Before deciding on a next step, Scranton leaders first want to see the outcome of changes to Act 47 pending in the state Legislature. These amendments would give financially-distressed cities more revenue alternatives, but also require an Act 205 wage tax to be imposed equally on residents and nonresidents.

Try again for Act 205 wage tax:

If the Act 205 equal-treatment provision dies, the city may consider imposing an Act 205 tax again — but this time with a relatively small increase for city residents and a larger increase for nonresidents, as other cities have done, said Mr. McGoff and city Business Administrator David Bulzoni.

Seek bankruptcy protection or a receiver:

Having the city seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection is not under consideration, Mr. McGoff said. It’s not clear the state would allow such a move, anyway, because Harrisburg’s attempt a few years ago was blocked and a receiver was installed there instead.

The city will reconsider the commuter tax in 2015, except this time they’ll consider levying it on everyone, including residents.

Chicago’s Pension Hole Gets Deeper

A new report from the watchdog group Civic Federation reveals that Chicago’s unfunded pension obligations have tripled since 2003 and now stand at $37 billion.

Details from the report, summarized by the Chicago Sun-Times:

The report found the gap between current assets of the ten funds and pensions promised to retirees had risen to $37.3 billion.

The 10 funds had an average funding level of 45.5 percent in 2012, down from 74.5 percent a decade ago.

The firefighters pension fund is in the worst shape, with assets to cover just 24.4 percent of future liabilities. The CTA pension fund is in the best financial condition at 59 percent.

Government employees did their part by contributing the required portion of their paychecks to their future pensions. But the government contribution fell nearly $2 billion short of the $2.8 billion required to cover costs and reduce a portion of unfunded liabilities over a 30-year time frame, the report concludes.

Investment income didn’t help. And the future outlook is bleak, thanks to a “declining ratio” of active employees to beneficiaries.

In 2012, the 10 funds had 1.11 active employees for every retiree, down from a 1.55 ratio a decade ago. The police, laborers, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Forest Preserve and CTA funds all had more beneficiaries than active employees in 2012.

Counting statewide funds, the pension liability amounts to $19,579 for every Chicago resident.

Chicago is required by law to make a $550 million contribution in 2016 to two police and fire pension funds. Mayor Rahm Emanuel presumably needs to raise that money through various taxes. But he has repeatedly promised not to raise property taxes, and more recently said he won’t raise gas or sales taxes, either. From the Sun-Times:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday ruled out pre-election increases in property, sales or gasoline taxes but pointedly refused to say whether he would steer clear of any other taxes, fines or fees.

“We’ve balanced three budgets in a row holding the line on property, sales and gas taxes and finding efficiencies and reforms in the system. . . . We eliminated the per-employee head tax . . . and we put money back in the rainy day fund,” the mayor said.

“On my fourth budget, we will hold the line on property, sales and gas taxes and put money back in the rainy day fund and continue to look at the system as a whole to find efficiencies and reforms and things that were duplicative where you could do better.”

This past summer, Chicago hiked its telephone tax by 56 percent.

Photo: Pete Souza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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.

__________________

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.

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