NCPERS News Clips

February 19, 2013

News Clips for February 19th, 2013

U.S. News

• Local pension plans punished by safe investments: study
  Cities and local governments are likely to put more money into their public pension plans than U.S. states, but conservative investments have led their retirement systems historically to be worse-funded, a Boston College study released on Tuesday found.
• Bankrupting US: Government Pensions
  All of the social justice we want to promote, money we want to spend on society, is threatened by the government pensions that Federal, State, and Local employees have acquired for themselves.
• Closed pension plans face non-discrimination peril
  Frozen pension plans are looking to Congress for a solution to the discrimination problem
• Battle builds over calculating pensions
  (California) Debate is brewing across the state over which types of pay can be counted toward a public worker's pension — fallout from landmark changes that went into effect this year.
• Big state pension change analyzed by actuaries
  The Republican legislative leadership's plan to "soft freeze" the Florida Retirement System -- making new public employees join a market-based investment pool similar to the 401(k) plans popular in the private sector -- will leave public agencies with dwindling numbers of employees contributing money to pay pensions for growing ranks of retirees, an actuarial study released Friday says.
• State pension fund rebounds in 2nd half of 2012
  South Carolina's pension fund investments rebounded in the second half of last year, pushing earnings above 12 percent for 2012 after fees.

Canadian News

• Debate on public sector pensions needs to be fact-based: Haslam-Stroud – ARIA post
  Responding to a column in the Waterloo Chronicle that questioned the value, for taxpayers, of public sector defined benefit pension plans, the president of the Ontario Nurses' Association provides some key facts.