is to pat oneself on the back and burp.

Meanwhile, $60 billion or so in arrears, a $3 billion budget deficit, and
a gerrymandered one-party legislature.

I have to credit an article I read, but the bottom line was that public pensions are simply not like private pensions associated with specific businesses or industries.

It's important that private pensions are fully funded because they represent legal fund obligations against the business(es) that must be honored regardless if the business stays in business or not. IOW, it's important for, as an example, Conrail's pension to be fully funded because it owes pension payments to retired workers/survivors despite no longer exisiting as a going concern.

OTOH, the Commwealth of Pennsylvania has been "in business" for 241 years and will exist for the foreseeable future. The Commonwealth can raise revenue by raising taxes as needed. It's not going bankrupt. Whether the pension system is "fully funded" or not is irrelevent because the investment fund isn't closed and the funds aren't being drawn down without being replenished.

By whatever standard the PA pension system has been subjected to it has nearly always been "underfunded". I think the plan currently holds about $50B in assets and pays out several hundred million in benefits with the average retiree getting something under $24k a year. I looked and in 1983 or so it was about 43% funded. Today its about 65% funded according to this accounting standard. Well the standard isn't worth the paper its printed on. The PA pension has made payments for over 40 years even though it's been "underfunded" for nearly its entire existence. This is just a cheap ploy for a bunch of investment companies to get their hands on state worker salaries. I would bet that state salaries will not go up even though the commonwealth will save lots of money doing this. With state salaries so low I suspect in another 30 years people retiring with their 401ks will be much worse off than those who had been promised a modest pension for their years of service.

If you take a job knowing the retirement system in advance, you can plan for your retirement. The states like Illinois that want to change the pension system for people that have been paying into it for decades leave the people about to retire with no choices. Thank God the Illinois pension system is written into the State Constitution.

The repercussion here is that a lousy paying State job now comes with a lousy pension. Good luck hiring any quality workers with that formula.

a state legislator. Then the pension stays the same.

SERS might possibly have a problem because it's paying pensions like the 20k/MONTH that Mellow was entitled to until he was convicted and lost his pension.

the pension and the health insurance are about the only thing PA state jobs have going for them. God knows the conditions are pretty crappy.

the powers that be in Pennsylvania did the same thing as in Illinois and Chicago. They "kicked the can down the road" by not fully funding the pension plans for decades. Now they are left with billions of dollars in pension debt. If they would have paid the bills on time, there would likely not be a "crisis" today. Gee, I wonder where all that money went?

for awhile. Back in the go-go 90s, the pension fund was actually "over funded". The state legislature allowed the school districts to not pay into the fund and most took advantage to use the pension contributions for other things. Of course now the chickens have come home to roost and the school districts have to "over fund" their pension obligations to make up for what they skipped.

To be fair to Gov Wolf, he has made it a priority to reduce the management fees paid by SERS by switching to different fund management philosophy ala index funds, etc.

I have to believe they cut their pensions out of this bill, too ...

By Paul Hammel / World-Herald Bureau May 31, 2017

LINCOLN — A state senator is sounding a warning alarm over the underfunded pension plan for Omaha Public Schools teachers and staff.

“They’re in trouble. I can’t say it any clearer than that,” said State Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward, who chairs the Legislature’s Retirement Systems Committee.

Kolterman recently hosted a financial briefing at the State Capitol on the status of the Omaha School Employees’ Retirement System.

The news was worse than expected.

FULL story: http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/they-re-in-trouble-i-can-t-say-it-any/article_e5d0d484-a2bd-58e7-804f-25a437c29e84.html