PERA meeting outlines problems, solutions
Colorado’s public employee pension plan is in trouble, and about 500 folks who are or will be its beneficiaries turned out in the Springs on Wednesday evening to take stock of the damage.
Like everyone with money in the stock market, the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association had a bad year in 2008, losing 26 percent of its assets. Its investments are back in the black in 2009, but PERA’s $10.5 billion in losses mean the fund is on course to run out of money — the money to pay the pensions of a beneficiary pool that’s currently more than 435,000 strong — in roughly 20 years.
Stopping at a south-side hotel and conference center on the second day of a statewide “listening tour,” Mark Anderson, the chairman of PERA’s board; Meredith Williams, its CEO; and Greg Smith, its general counsel, took turns laying out the problem and going over possible solutions.
“Unless change is made, the fund is not sustainable in the long term,” Williams said.
The fix boils down to two categories, they explained: reduce benefits and/or increase revenues.
As it works toward a Nov. 1 deadline to deliver its recommendations to the state Legislature, which must approve any changes to the plan, PERA is soliciting public input on a laundry list of options. Here are just a few: raising the retirement age or the length of service required to qualify for benefits, reducing benefits or cutting beneficiaries’ annual cost-of-living increases, and increasing employer and employee contributions to the fund.
The audience was generally sympathetic. Several people praised PERA and said it was the envy of many private-sector employees who have lost pensions in recent years. But those who addressed the board tended to defend their slice of the pie.
Retirees like Karen Kitzky. wanted no cuts to their benefits. “Take the words post-retirement and retroactive out of your vocabulary,” she said.
Those who are still working didn’t want the solution to come solely out of their wallets, or their future benefits.
“I’m 40 years old,” said Wendy Rich, “and I don’t want all the cuts on my back.” She said benefits cuts would discourage young workers from seeking public-sector jobs.
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