Texas state workers fear fallout from changing math on pensions
by Jim Malewitz, Texas Tribune
Jerry Wald retired early after 21 years of state service and left behind the stresses of his supervisor role at the Department of Aging and Disability Services. But a decade after he stopped punching the clock, the 67-year-old has a different sort of anxiety: watching the buying power of his monthly state pension check shrink.
“Every year I’m alive, I’m losing money,” said Wald, who lives in Houston.
Though health care, food and most everything else keeps getting more expensive, the monthly pension checks for thousands of retired state workers haven’t increased since 2001. An amalgam of factors, including chronic legislative underfunding that’s only recently been addressed, has kept the Employees Retirement System of Texas from adjusting its payments for the rising cost of living.
And now a looming vote by the retirement system’s board of trustees has retirees even more worried. On Thursday, the board will consider lowering its earnings assumption for the $26 billion trust fund and changing its predicted rate of return from 8 percent per year to as little as 7 or 7.25 percent, based upon the recommendations of a financial firm hired to perform a broader study of the system.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/22/texas-state-workers-fear-fallout-changing-math-pensions/
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These trustees wouldn't happen to be republican, would they?
