As anticipated, the beneficiary-ruled board that oversees Mississippi’s retirement system doesn’t want to lose control.
It is opposing a House bill that would instead give the majority of the votes on that board to people who aren’t in the Public Employees’ Retirement System, thus reducing the conflict of interest that presently exists.
Last week, a state Senate panel heard from a couple of current PERS board members. Both have voted to increase the already sky-high employer contribution in an effort to shore up the underfunded pension plan — the same strategy that the PERS board has unsuccessfully tried several times before. They said they didn’t like what the increase would do to the entities for which they work — one is a school superintendent, the other a chief financial officer of a city — but that their first responsibility was to PERS and its beneficiaries. Understood but not said is that they may personally benefit when they retire from how they voted.
That is the problem. As long as PERS has a board in which the beneficiaries rule, it is unlikely to adopt or recommend changes that would be detrimental to the members, no matter how large the long-term liability becomes. It will instead do just what this board is doing — raising the employer contribution and asking for a direct annual subsidy from the Legislature, thus hitting taxpayers coming and going.
If Mississippi wants to try a different approach in dealing with PERS’ $25 billion long-term funding shortage, it will take putting people on the board who don’t have a personal stake in the pension plan.
