Financial pressures and equity considerations require that the state rethink how it provides retirement security. Under the Massachusetts constitution, major changes could only be applied to new employees. An important first question in thinking through change options for new employees is: What does federal law require the state to provide to employees?
Pensions & Benefits
benefit improvements, disability reform, early retirement incentives, long term perspective, municipal health insurance, opeb reform, pension reform, public/private comparisons
Is Paris Burning?
I draw your attention to the streets of Paris, this from the lead paragraph in an article in the10/13 WSJ — ” PARIS—French unions brought more than a million people into the streets Tuesday and vowed to press on with more strikes to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to lift the retirement age, a measure …
Our long term financial problems
There is a growing belief among serious economists that we, as a country, face a large and unsustainable gap between our financial resources and our financial expectations. Current deficit spending by the national government and a failure to control long term debt, pension and health care costs at all levels of government will lead to …
Pensions – Public and Private
There’s a thoughtful discussion on On Point today about how to handle guaranteed pensions in the face of economic volatility: http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/07/pension-crisis They touch on pensions’ contributions towards budget deficits, how some public employees game their respective systems, and how public salaries differ from private salaries. It’s worth a listen if you’re interested in the issue.
Municipal Relief Bill
The conference committee negotiating a municipal relief package reported a bill last night and the House accepted the report on what turned out to be straight party line vote.
State pension obligations
Will, There was an article in Saturday’s NYT entitled “In Budget Crisis States Take Aim at Pension Costs“. It quotes a pension expert who finds that states like Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey are less than 10 years from exhausting their pension funds. However, as the article says “…paying public pensions straight out of …