Annual Statewide RSEA Meeting Schedule: Where is Your Chapter Meeting?

RSEA will conduct their annual statewide chapter tour in February and March. A LASERS rep will present at each meeting. Members are encouraged to attend their respective chapter meetings for up-to-date information on issues affecting their pension benefits.

                                     

Active and retired state employees are eligible to join RSEA and are invited to attend.

Alexandria              Thursday, February 13 at 9:30 a.m.

                                   Kees Park Community Center

                                   2450 Hwy 28 East, Pineville

Lake Charles         Tuesday, February 18 at 9:30 a.m.

                                   Lake Charles Civic Center, Contraband Room

                                   900 Lakeshore Drive, Lake Charles

Acadiana                Wednesday, February 19 at 9:30 a.m.

                                  The Scott Events Center

                                  100 Lions Club Road, Scott

Baton Rouge         Thursday, February 20 at 9:30 a.m.

                                   Holiday Inn South

                                   9940 Airline Hwy., Baton Rouge

North Shore           Wednesday, March 5 at 9:30 a.m.

                                   Greater Covington Center, Bogue Falaya Hall

                                   317 N. Jefferson Ave., Covington

Coastal                    Thursday, March 6 at 9:30 a.m.

                                   Quality Hotel

                                   210 South Hollywood Road, Houma

New Orleans          Friday, March 7 at 10:00 a.m.

                                   Landmark Hotel

                                   2601 Severn Avenue, Metairie

Opinion: Public Plans No Windfall for Workers

Written by Dennis Persica 
Original article in The Advocate
September 12, 2013

One of the more interesting philosophical flip-flops in the debate over public-employee pensions is how willing people are to use a level-the-field argument against government workers.

But first, a disclosure: As the surviving spouse of a former state worker, I get a monthly benefit from LASERS, the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System.

Back to the discussion: Look at the comment stream on any online story about retirement benefits for public workers, and you’re likely to see a certain sentiment expressed. It goes like this: Defined-benefit pensions are a thing of the past in private industry, so why should government employees still be entitled to them?

If you raised that “leveling” argument in any other discussion, though, you’d be shot down promptly, and probably by the same people.

Tax better-off folks to pay for government services for the classes below them? Answer: That’s socialism!

Enact affirmative action programs to ensure that opportunities are spread out to an ethnically diverse corps of job seekers? Answer: It’s not about race, it’s about finding qualified employees.

But talk about preserving government pensions, and suddenly we’re fighting like crabs in a barrel, with people demanding that public pensioners be dragged down to the level of private-industry workers who have no access to defined-benefit pensions.

There are a few things to remember about government retirees. For Louisiana state employees, as well as many other public employees across the country, there is no Social Security to fall back on. The same once was true of federal workers; they contributed only to the federal retirement system but not to Social Security. When President Ronald Reagan and a Democratic Congress decided to try to fix Social Security, they required federal employees to contribute to it.

People who’ve spent a lifetime in state or local government service may have only their public pension coming to them. That’s a major difference between those on a public pension and those on one provided by private industry. If the private pension program goes belly-up, the former employee still can draw Social Security.

Another difference between government-pension systems and private-industry pensions is this irony: If a private-industry pension program runs into trouble, its retirees wind up on the equivalent of a government pension, via the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. PBGC works as a kind of insurance company (businesses pay premiums into it) and takes over pension systems that run into trouble.

It will pay a retiree a maximum of $57,477 per year in benefits, and that maximum changes every year. So, someone with a pension from a private system that’s run into trouble can be assured they’re not going to be living on the street, begging for food. However, a government employee whose pension plan defaults –— and all eyes are on Detroit at the moment — has no protection. PBGC does not cover public pensions.

Yes, there have been abuses in the system, as we saw a few years ago in Jefferson Parish, but that’s no reason to let public-pension systems wither on the vine. After all, no one’s talking about shutting down Wall Street just because some people occasionally figure out ways to cheat investors.

Usually, the pension abusers are those who have enough political pull to game the system to their advantage. Most rank-and-file public employees don’t have that, and they would be the babies thrown out with the bathwater if we decided to let a troubled public pension system die just because private-industry workers don’t have access to similar plans.


Dennis Persica is a New Orleans-area journalist. In his weekly column, he shares his thoughts and observations about people, places and issues in the New Orleans area. Persica’s email address is dpersica@theadvocate.com.

Rougeou Shares Positive News at Open Forum

LASERS Executive Director Cindy Rougeou welcomed state agency human resource (HR) staff to the LASERS Annual Open Forum on Wednesday, August 28. The meeting is an opportunity for LASERS to share the latest news and changes affecting retirement for LASERS agencies and members and hear concerns from the HR community.

In her opening remarks, Rougeou addressed the sustainability of LASERS. She commented that questions have been raised about the soundness of pension systems given the recent news about the bankruptcy filing of the city of Detroit. "We are not Detroit. We are not going bankrupt," said Rougeou.

In addition to a 10-year market return of 8.2 percent and a 2013 fiscal year market return of 12.6 percent, Rougeou pointed to a 10-year cash flow analysis that LASERS recently completed. While LASERS has paid out over $7 billion in benefits in the past 10 years, the System has collected $11 billion from contributions and investment earnings. Because 90 percent of our retirees stay in Louisiana, she noted that the benefits they have earned and expend result in a powerful and positive economic generator on our state's economy.

Rougeou also gave an overview of the payment schedule of the Unfunded Accrued Liability (UAL), which is the debt owed by the State to the System. On the current payment schedule, in nine years, the UAL is set to drop by $1.4 billion and by $4.4 billion in 20 years.

Rougeou also touted recent cost-saving measures, stating, "It is too often forgotten that since 2005, the Legislature has made significant changes or reforms to the benefit structure. With the passage of Act 75 of 2005 and Act 992 of 2010, the cost of LASERS rank-and-file plans will be reduced by nearly $800 million," Rougeou said.

Rougeou also commented that LASERS member benefits are funded during the active working life of the member, unlike Social Security which operates as a "pay-as-you-go" system.  She reassured attendees that LASERS benefits are protected by the Constitution, as is the financial soundness of the System.

LASERS Receives Prestigious National Award

The Public Pension Coordinating Council (PPCC) has awarded the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS) with the Public Pension Standards Award for 2012. The PPCC presents this award to public employee retirement systems in recognition of their achievement of high professional standards in the areas of plan design and administration, benefits, actuarial valuations, financial reporting, investments, and membership communications.

This is the ninth consecutive year that LASERS has received this prestigious award. LASERS Executive Director Cindy Rougeou said, “We are proud to receive this honor and the recognition is directly attributable to the talented and professional staff at LASERS.”

The PPCC is a confederation of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, and the National Council on Teacher Retirement.