Too Little, Too Late

In contrast to Wayne’s legislation mentioned in the previous post, we have the sad attempt to buy the loyalty of teachers, state employees, retired teachers and state workers.

Do the retirement systems need the $50 million? Hell yes. But the hypocritical thing here is that these two guys have been complicit in the under funding of both systems for years. They have used the retirement systems like an ATM machine to fund pork barrel projects and maintain their own power.

HB 419 (BR 1388) - H. Moberly Jr, J. Richards AN ACT relating to the funding of public employee retirement systems, making an appropriation therefor, and declaring an emergency.

Amend 2006 Kentucky Acts Chapter 252, the state/executive branch budget bill, to appropriate an additional $25,000,000 for the Teachers' Retirement System Medical Insurance Fund; create the Retirement Contribution Supplement Pool in the Personnel Cabinet; appropriate $25,000,000 for this pool to implement new employer retirement contribution rates for the Kentucky Employees Retirement Systems and the State Police Retirement System from April 1, 2007, through June 30, 2007; require any general fund moneys directed to be appropriated by Part VII, General Fund Surplus Expenditure Plan, to the Kentucky Retirement Systems to be appropriated to the Kentucky Systems Insurance Fund; delete the Kentucky Retirement Systems and the Kentucky Teachers' Retirement System's medical insurance fund from the General Fund Surplus Expenditure plan; declare an emergency

If they really cared about this problem they would have done something about it years ago. This is like putting a band-aid on a severed artery.

A First Step at Fixing KRS

I have been posting for a while now about the lack of legislative oversight regarding the Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Jim Wayne, in my opinion one of the bright lights of the legislature, has taken the first step in fixing the problem. His proposed legislation would provide a means of ending the on going self appointing nature of the board.

HB 535 (BR 1769) - J. Wayne
AN ACT relating to retirement. Amend KRS 61.645 to require the Kentucky Retirement Systems Board of Trustees to nominate all constitutionally eligible members of KERS, CERS, or SPRS who request to be nominated for placement on the trustee election ballot of their respective retirement system.

It looks like Wayne took part of one of Jonathan Miller’s ideas on how to clean up the KRS. Now if someone will just amend the bill to include the others, we will have a good start on cleaning up the system.

Reforms for the public pension systems will include:

• Posting the names of the chairs of all systems committees on the Web
• Posting times of all full board meetings on the Web at least one month prior to the meetings
• Posting times of all committee meetings on the Web sites at least one month prior to the meetings
• Posting on the Web all minutes of the full boards, as well as committees, within one week of the meetings
• Including State Treasurer and Secretary of State on both the KRS and KTRS boards
• Including the Secretary of Finance on the boards as a voting member and as a member of investment and audit committees
• Making the Personnel Secretary a voting member of the boards and chair of the personnel committees
• Opening voting rules for employee representatives (emphasis added) and including term limits
• Banning exclusions of board members from any committees
• Full disclosure of investment commissions paid by name of firm and firm's location
• Full disclosure of all legal fees including proceeds from class action suits and attorney of record on class action suits