NCPERS News Clips

January 4, 2011

News Clips for January 4th, 2011

• AP survey: ND lawmakers ready for pension shakeup
  North Dakota lawmakers are willing to consider excluding newly hired teachers and government workers from state pensions, and putting them instead into retirement savings plans that do not have guaranteed benefits, an Associated Press survey shows.
• Lawmakers will face pay, pension issues
  (Montana) Members of the 2011 Legislature will be asked to approve a pay increase agreed to by the Schweitzer administration and three major unions, to consider capping state employees' pay and benefits and to make some adjustments in state pension plans.
• Pittsburgh Council Passes Tax Dedication for Pensions
  Pittsburgh's City Council voted 7-2 for a plan to dedicate $13 million a year in parking taxes to its pension fund to avoid a state takeover that threatens to double the city's payments into the system by 2015.
• Leave the baby boomers alone
  In response to Robert Samuelson's Sunday column, "Don't spare the boomers from budget pain": In the famous words of Margaret Thatcher, "The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money."
• State to tackle pension reform
  Former Ormond Beach Mayor Fred Costello made no secret of his hope to reform the state pension plan when he ran for the Florida House, and he was challenged for it -- facing a police union official in the Republican primary and a former school district official in the November general election.
• Illinois Has Days to Plug $13 Billion Deficit That Took Years to Produce
  Illinois lawmakers will try this week to accomplish in a few days what they have been unable to do in the past two years -- resolve the state's worst financial crisis.