STATE OF NJ EMPLOYEE PENSION & BENEFITS
February 25,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood Nj, Jersey Born and Bred Gubernatorial candidate Joseph R. Rullo has put together a few ideas to solve the state’s massive pension crisis. Most of the ideas are relatively painless for employees and taxpayers and unlike other grand schemes easily doable .
Rullo starts with investing basics by looking to eliminate $700 million in pension fees to NYC politically connected brokerage houses and replace with licensed brokers in the state investors division to pay savings towards pension payment. The pension fees went from 125M to 700M per year in the last 7 years.
https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/2016/10/new-jersey-gubernatorial-candidate-remove-wall-street-from-new-jersey-pension-system/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJAwKQ8TLOM&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
Let’s face it according to the all the town hall protesters New Jersey loves Obamacare so Rullo says :
*Open up state employee health insurance bids across America to create competition to lower premiums and get better coverage for employees.
Rullo get creative with the next one;
* Dedicate a portion of recreational marijuana revenues to pay towards pension payment.
Was first reported by The Star-Ledger’s Editorial Page Editor Tom Moran in a Sunday column arguing passionately for legalization. Joseph Rudy Rullo, a declared Republican candidate for New Jersey governor in 2017, also supports marijuana legalization.
https://www.njumr.org/…/praise-for-phil-murphy-marijuana-le…
And finally something that long over do in the state of New Jersey . We can start with the pensions and work our way through every state agency .
* Open up a formal investigation and audit the pension fund for the last several decades to hold politicians in both parties accountable for their actions.
Can he start working with the governor now? Why wait, it only gets worse.
Although his one suggestion is a step in the right direction, it amounts to a drop in the bucket.
Kim is a losing bet. No one is double downing in Christie. No way.
Hey Joey, the NJ state pension plans already cut pension checks worth over $8 billion per year for their members. Reducing pension management fees is a good idea, but it doesn’t change the trajectory of the curve much where pension costs (outflows) grow faster than pension assets (inflows). It’s a Ponzi scheme where those retired now will get paid their pensions in full, but when many of these funds go insolvent by 2027, newer retirees will get screwed because the pension math doesn’t work.
The pension math was working fine until money was withdrawn and used for other purposes and never replaced along with missed employer contributions. I love how people say the pension system and even Social Security are ponzi schemes that can’t work. You can’t compare them to ponzi schemes if you are not allowing these systems to work the way they were intended to. The reason the state took the money from the system is because the system was actually over funded….and of course, a politician can’t stand to see surplus money just sitting around.
Exactly 3:35 pm. But don’t expect 9:25 pm to understand or agree with you. It doesn’t fit with his narrative about bashing public employees.
Ummm, $10 BILLION in pension checks to public employeees last year versus only $70bn in assets means you need annual returns of 14% just to keep pension assets flat. An assumed rate of return of 7.65% versus actual annual returns of 7.2%. We only sent out $8bn two years ago, so that’s a 25% increase in pension distributions in just the past two years. And only 1.24 workers for every public sector retiree, who are living 2~3 years longer than the pension funds assume because they use actuarial data on lifespans from the 1980s. That’s the definition of a PONZI scheme. The money’s gone on union giveaways like American Dream Meadowlands and Atlantic City white elephants like Revel. Tax payers aren’t bailing you out any more.
Bashing public employees? It’s the unions who are doing that by lying to their members about the insolvency of their pension plans. Most of the plans will be insolvent by 2027, with no funds to meet pension demands. If the unions actually cared about their members, they’d explain that only defined contribution plans would protect new employees from not getting any pension after 2027.
I’m sure the unions will do a great job managing their own pensions. Maybe they can invest more in American Dream Meadowlands or put it all on red in the casino at their own Revel hotel?
Hey 3:35, what “other purposes” was the money used for? Do tell.
New Jersey’s pension funds were flush at the turn of the 21st century. But since 1996, governors from both parties have been underfunding the system, making payments far below what actuaries recommend.
The state skipped payments altogether from 2001 to 2004, when the annual required contribution called for $2.8 billion. And while the state was taking a pension holiday,
And where did that money go?
More FAKE union thug lies 11:27. Where did the money go? Not for tax reduction, that’s for sure. The Transportation Trust Fund – which your boys like Sarlo in Trenton use to divert taxpayer money to union controlled construction firms that charge 3X more than any other state per mile of state roadwork – is now $20 billion in debt. That’s once place you can look for your money. The other place to look is the $10 billion in pension funds diverted to union pet projects like the Revel Hotel & Casino in AC and the white elephant American Dream in the Meadowlands. Christie is diverting lottery funds to make the largest ever $2.5 billion pension payment in state history this year, and yet you union pigs still want more, more, more. Well here’s a newsflash, “NO MORE”.
The only FAKE comment here is yours 6:46 AM…..
.
The Status Report of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission which was issued on September 25, 2014 stated, and I quote:
.Page 3) Both public employees and taxpayers as a whole, however, have been poorly served by a long-standing and bipartisan tradition of increasing benefit levels without adequate funding. Successive Governors and State Legislatures have committed the State to providing these benefits based on relatively optimistic financial assumptions without adequate consideration of the long-term costs to taxpayers if economic reality were to fall short of these assumptions.
.
The specific cause of the $3 billion gap in FY 2014 is that the State paid less than $700 million of the $3.7 billion it would have had to have paid to meet its statutory annual required contribution (“ARC”)2 to the pension funds for that year.
.
All that being said, however, the failure of the State to make required pension contributions when they have been due has made a bad situation much worse. Local governments participate in the same plans but have made more of their required payments with greater regularity, resulting in the local government share of the funds having a funded ratio of 75%, compared to the State’s 54% funded ratio.11 Under-funding the State’s share of the plans has been consistent under the stewardship of both major parties, as shown by the chart on the following page:
.
The reported asset values and statutory changes enabled the State, in full compliance with the standards then in place, to discontinue making contributions to the funds. While there were clear warnings then that this could lead to huge fiscal problems in the future, at the time it permitted hundreds of millions of dollars to be diverted to other purposes ranging from education to tax relief. Compounding the problem, during the years when the pension plans were apparently well-funded (but actually lapsing into deficits), the Legislature enacted a series of benefit enhancements, including a retroactive 9% increase in TPAF and PERS pensions in 2001, which increased State pension liabilities by $4.2 billion.35.
Have you got anything to back up your statement of LIES 6:46 AM…..Charlie?