Cost Of School Pension Underfunding In 2021: 42% Of Teacher Payroll Expense

Cost Of School Pension Underfunding In 2021: 42% Of Teacher Payroll Expense

• Politicians overpromised, managers filled gap with rosy scenarios, taxpayers on the hook

"...the state’s Office of Retirement Services forecast in 2012 that school districts would have to contribute about 31% of their payroll costs to fund retirement for most of the next decade. 

But in 2021, it said, the actual rate is up to 42.7%.

The primary reason for the gap, according to James Hohman, the Mackinac Center’s director of fiscal policy, is that forecasters made overly optimistic estimates pension fund growth. 

...All this means that school districts, and their taxpayers, now bear a heavy burden in having to bolster the Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System (MPSERS). 

That is because decades of underfunding have left the pension fund more than $40 billion short of the amount needed to pay promised retirement benefits...Read all.