PERA meeting and recommendation

Today MNPEA Vice President Tom Perkins and I met with PERA Executive Director Doug Anderson and Shayna (?).

They very graciously gave us an hour and a half. We all have the same goal of keeping our pension healthy. They have tremendous pressure to move the plans to 100% funding, a goal I agree with.

There is a proposal to lower the actuarial tables from 8% to 7.5%. If passed, this changes the amount considered fully funded. Under current law it's 8% and our payouts are based on that.

If the actuarial is lowered to 7.5% the proposal is to eliminate the triggers (read previous posts) and go to an across the board COLA formula. An annual COLA of 1% (as a floor) with a max COLA of 1.5% based on inflation (CPI).

In effect this cuts the PERA Correctional COLA a full 1% and the other, not as well funded plans only .5% and  *maintains 1% with no cut to the Police and Fire COLA even though they require $9,000,000 a year just to keep current funding.

This all leads to an assumed funding for the PERA General Plan and Police and Fire to be at 110% in 2047.

Ok, but the PERA Correctional Plan would be funded at 120% in 2047. With "shared sacrifice" we sacrifice more. It reminds me of the book Animal Farm. "All animals are created equal. But some are more equal than others."

PERA does not make law, but are frequently asked for recommendations. These recommendations mirror the O'Driscoll and Rosen Bill.

They gave us this meeting because as stakeholders, MNPEA and retirees of MNPEA, had no input into what they will propose. Now we have, again thank you Doug Anderson.

The hope is when they meet in January they will recommend, like last year, no change to the PERA Correctional Plan.

*Post corrected 12/22/17 I originally posted P&F would get a .5% COLA.