I wish people would just listen... Hoffman: Fact checking on PERS costs Jul. 29, 2013 | People say a lot about the Public Employees Retirement System. Some say it’s going bankrupt. Some say it has no problems at all. Some say it leaves most retirees eating cat food, while others say most of them are buying a new car every two years. None of that is true. Most retirees are living modest lives and the system is neither a disaster nor a paragon of perfection. It has its problems, but it’s not going bankrupt any time soon. Other claims, however, cannot be fact checked with common sense. They sound like they could be true, or could equally well not be true. Most of these are statistics. So to help out, your friendly neighborhood reporter is here. PERS Executive Director Paul Cleary accidentally made one of these statements at the end of the legislative session. He was advising a Senate committee on what would happen if the Legislature eliminated or cut back benefits for future retirees who have stopped working in the public sector, and he was trying to describe how much money those people cost. All of a sudden, Twitter exploded with “quotes” from him: Cleary says 4 percent of inactives make up 40 percent of PERS liability. Oh, Twitter. What Cleary actually said was that 4 percent of inactive members (those who have money in the system but don’t work in the public sector anymore) represent 40 percent of the cost of all inactive members. It’s not even close to 4 percent of the PERS liability. PERS spokesman David Crosley helped me find the numbers. Here’s what he said: The total PERS liability is $61.2 billion. (They have most of that money in the PERS fund, by the way. It’s how much they owe all current and future retirees.) Inactive retirees make up 8 percent of that, so they cost about $4.9 billion as a group. The 4 percent Cleary was referring to make up 40 percent of thatcost. That’s about $1.96 billion. That’s about 3 percent of the total PERS liability. The claims on Twitter weren’t even close to true because those people misheard what Cleary said. A lot of claims about PERS (and other subjects) get made this way. Someone hears a number from an official source and repeats it, but they heard it incorrectly. But it sounds true to others and it gets repeated or retweeted or shared. So if you have a number like this you want checked out, send it to your friendly neighborhood reporter. (See contact below.) hhoffman@StatesmanJournal or (503) 399-6719
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 19:20:02 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015