MARCH 15, 2018
Woodbury
Bulletin
The
core functions of government
need to operate efficiently. We've seen here in Minnesota and elsewhere that neglecting the basics can have
serious repercussions. This year we need to shore up our outstanding pension obligations. To ignore those
responsibilities puts retirees and their families at ...
Center of the American
Experiment
The Teachers
Retirement Association (TRA), which manages pensions for the majority of
teachers in Minnesota, told legislators last month that it wanted to drop its
assumed rate of return from 8.5 to 7.5 percent. TRA is the last public fund in
the entire United States to assume its assets can earn 8.5%.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Both DFL and GOP
legislators said they need to adapt the state tax code to federal changes, fix
the vehicle licensing and registration system, improve school safety and
address underfunded public employee pensions. This legislative session will
likely include many debates over how exactly to address ...
MinnPost
Lawmakers are also
dealing with the state's problem-plagued licensing and registration system,
which could need up to $43 million in emergency funding to get back on track.
There's also a desire to shore up the state's obligations to its pension plan
holders. A pension bill currently under consideration ...
NATIONAL NEWS + OPINION
Madison.com
Retired
public employees across the
state who participate in the Wisconsin Retirement
System will get bigger pension
checks, starting May 1. All 203,000 retirees in the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) are due for a
2.4 percent increase in their payments from the Core Trust Fund, the main fund,
the ...
Business Wire (press release)
“The business
intelligence provided by the 164 study participants supports efforts by the
public pension community as a whole to comprehend and analyze challenges and
find opportunities for steady improvement,” Kim said. Pension plans can access
the study in “dashboard” format, enabling them to ...
Colorado Public Radio
A legislative
committee will take its first pass at Senate Bill 200, 57 pages of dense public
policy meant to majorly overhaul Colorado's Public Employee Retirement
Association, the state's pension fund. There are bipartisan sponsors, and yet,
even as lawmakers unveiled the bill, they acknowledged it ...
New Haven Register
The pension
discussion came at the end of the first public hearing on the city's fiscal
2019 $547 million budget proposal that represents a 1.52 percent increase over
the current year and an 11 percent hike in the tax rate to 42.98 mills. The
proposed capital fund is $79 million. Acting Budget Director ...
Scranton Times-Tribune
A new Economic
Policy Institute study by Jeffrey Keefe, a Rutgers University professor
emeritus, finds that Pennsylvania's public school teachers earn 6.8 percent
less, even after accounting for pension benefits, than similarly educated and
skilled workers in the state. Looking to the future, Keefe finds that ...
Watchdog.org
The Nevada Policy
Research Institute (NPRI) has been battling the state since 2015, but the legal
battle began in 2011 when the Reno Gazette-Journal (RGJ) filed a lawsuit after
its request was denied to receive copies of PERS records documenting public
pension recipients and their benefits. Carson ...
Seattle Times
By comparison, the
state's pension funds' largest single stock holding is $573.3 million in Apple,
a 1.65 percent stake of total public-equity investments for Washington
retirement plans. Olin Corp. licenses the production of Winchester firearms and
it manufactures ammunition. Sturm, Ruger & Co. makes ...
Yankee Institute (blog)
Education savings
accounts get a public hearing, drawing local and national experts ...
Connecticut also faces a growing crisis in its teacher pension system. The
costs of teacher pensions is projected to grow from $1.2 billion per year to
potentially $6 billion per year and represents one of the fastest ...
Chief Investment Officer
Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown has signed into law a bill that establishes two funds to help the state's
schools and other public employers cover growing public pension costs. One of
the funds would receive the majority of the money, as much as several hundred
million dollars by some estimates, which would ...
Michigan Capitol Confidential
For the first time
in eight years, the state of Michigan put more money into its public schools
employees' pension fund than accounting rules require. Contributing less than
that in most years is how a pension funding shortfall has grown large. The
state contributed $2.4 billion to the Michigan Public ...
Chicago Sun-Times
Without big public
pension funds, such as those in Illinois, investors would lose leverage. They
could expect to see their savings gain less value over time. Only money
managers and others in the financial class would be happy about that. Yes,
Illinois has a big pension problem. Massively underfunded ...
Hartford Courant
27, to learn about
the pension and health insurance crisis facing retired teachers in the state.
The event was ... Active teachers saw a one percent increase in their pension
contribution as of Jan. ... Alice Deloge worked in several jobs before she
started teaching in the Killingly public schools. She was ...
New York Times (blog)
For example, the
nation's largest traditional pension, the California Public Employees'
Retirement System, known as Calpers, has 1.9 million members and over $300
billion in assets. When it calls up an investment manager to complain about
performance, or to dump that manager, or when it calls a ...
Pensions & Investments
Responding to an
inquiry from a state senator on how much the $34.2 billion Connecticut
Retirement Plans & Trust Funds had invested in gun companies and the
process to divest, Denise L. Nappier, state treasurer and sole trustee of the
retirement plan, said she is in the process of engaging with gun ...
Pensions & Investments
"Rather than
bundling public equity separately, they're bucketing them together in a broader
movement around outcomes." And matching liabilities is no longer just
associated with corporate defined benefit plans. J. Tyler Cloherty,
Darien-based senior manager at Casey Quirk, said public pension funds ...
www.businessgreen.com
They must also
review ethical and environmental risks to their investments at least every
three years under existing pensions regulations, Opperman explained.
"Given that there is a broad scientific and public policy consensus that
climate change is such a risk, then trustees already have a duty to
take ...
Wall Street Journal
Public pensions,
often the target of political pressure, increasingly invest with an eye toward
the public scrutiny that can come with exposure to certain companies or
industries. They also face criticism that holding stakes, even small ones, in
firearms makers could make them complicit in gun violence.
Crain's Detroit Business
As of this week,
Michigan's public employees no longer own gun shares. The State of Michigan
Retirement System, which manages $70 billion in pensions for educators, police
and other public employees, on Monday sold its holdings in chemical company
Clayton, Miss.-based Olin Corp. (NYSE: OLN) ...
New Haven Register
Donald Williams,
executive director of the Connecticut Education Association and a former
president of the state Senate, said one of the recommendations he did agree
with is the plan to use proceeds from lottery solely to fund teacher's
pensions. But Williams said other recommendations take “away the ...
CNBC
The
world's largest asset manager details its approach to the gun industry in a
three-page letter in response to overwhelming customer interest. BlackRock says
it is showing customers options for changing their investments to exclude
stocks of gun makers and is considering new funds that don't invest ...
Reuters
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey's treasurer said on Thursday she will increase the
expected rate of return for the state's struggling public pension system from 7 percent to 7.5 percent, then lower it
again over time. The switch to a higher assumed rate means that the state, and
participating local ...
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