Panel would finally employ PA’s arsenal of experts
READING, Jan. 13, 2015 – Faced with a growing multi-billion dollar pension deficit and no good proposal to solve the problem, state Sen. Judy Schwank today said she will introduce a bill that would direct a new commission to properly examine the issue and propose a bipartisan solution.
The proposal would require a Public Pensions Review Commission to submit its solution to the commonwealth’s pension problem no later than six months after the bill is signed into law.
“We have known for years that Pennsylvania’s pension systems have been suffering because of the decisions of the past,” Schwank said. “But those decisions, like the proposals that have since been offered and rejected, were made without the full benefit of their implications.
“We continue to face a very serious problem in funding our state pension systems yet legislators persist in proposing solutions that fail to cure the actual problem,” she said.
If Schwank’s bill is approved, the Public Pensions Review Commission would be comprised of representatives from each branch of state government plus state system universities, state-related universities, the separate state organizations of county governments, municipal governments and school districts, major public employee unions, and the general public.
The PPRC would be authorized to conduct hearings and receive appropriate information and analysis and be supported by the Joint State Government Commission.
The commission would also be subject to right-to-know, sunshine and state ethics laws.
Sen. Schwank said she and other lawmakers understand that pension reform will be a top issue during the 2015-2016 legislative session. While well intentioned, she said she believes Senate Bill 1 will not be much better than past proposals that looked to cure Pennsylvania’s pension crisis.
“Most of those ‘solutions’ have failed miserably because they didn’t address the current unfunded liability and they didn’t look at how the current plans could be managed differently,” Schwank said. “Those proposals might have resolved the problem in the future but they did nothing to resolve the problem we are facing now.”
Pennsylvania’s pension plans – the State Employees’ Retirement System, or SERS, and the Public School Employees’ Retirement System, or PSERS – have a combined shortfall of $48 billion, Schwank said.
“We have wasted too much time rehashing the same proposals and political posturing while the pension issue festers. We need to get the right people to the table and find the right solutions to the pension problem,” Schwank said. “We need solutions that are equitable to state and public school employees as well as Pennsylvania taxpayers.”
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More information on Sen. Schwank is available on her website, Facebook and Twitter.