NCPERS News Clips

7/7/2009

Why We Fight

This week we lead off with a Wall Street Journal opinion (read: scaremongering) piece written by Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This looks like another run by anti-pension activists, in the guise of taxpayer watchdogs, at scaring taxpayers into supporting the dismantling of defined benefit pensions and moving toward defined contribution systems. As always, we need to remain vigilant and continue to fight against these ideologues.

• Public Pensions Cook the Books
  Here's a dilemma: You manage a public employee pension plan and your actuary tells you it is significantly underfunded. You don't want to raise contributions. Cutting benefits is out of the question. To be honest, you'd really rather not even admit there's a problem, lest taxpayers get upset.
• Pension funds to lead BofA investor lawsuit
  A group of five public pension funds, including state funds in Ohio and Texas, have won the right to lead investor class-action lawsuits against Bank of America Corp over its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.
• Dismissal is sought in pension fraud case
  Defense lawyers for five former San Diego pension system officials who face fraud charges are accusing prosecutors of misconduct and asking a judge to dismiss the case.
• Pension adviser settles NY kickback probe for $2M
  The Pacific Corporate Group, a company that helps big government pension funds decide how to invest their money, has agreed to pay $2 million to extract itself from a corruption investigation in New York.
• Calif. judge orders release of public pension data
  California's leading taxpayers' rights group says the public scored a major legal victory this week when a judge ruled that a county's pension records are not entirely confidential.
• Philly officials decry pension takeover proposal
  Philadelphia officials are criticizing a proposal circulating in the state Legislature that could result in a state takeover of the city's municipal pension plan. The state Public Employers Retirement Commission wants to move city pensions that have less than half of the assets required to meet long-term obligations into a state-run pension plan.
• SC: State ordered to pay retirees
  The South Carolina Retirement System must pay back about $40 million in retirement contributions it improperly took from the paychecks of state employees who participated in a program that lets them continue working after retirement, a state judge ruled this week.

National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems
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