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1 Employee Pension Systems in State and Local Government 1 (1976)

handle is hein.tera/empenirn0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Employee Pension Systems in State and Local Government This is a summary of an 80-page study by the above title prepared by Tax Founda- tion. The study (Research Publication No. 33) is available at a price of $3 per copy from the Foundation's office, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10020. Retirement provisions are an impor- tant element of the employment agree- ment in the modern world for both employers and workers. If states and localities are to be good employers, if the public is to obtain good quality service, pension plans must be inte- grated efficiently into the total pack- age of benefits. Taxpayers must ex- pect to bear costs for pensioners which two generations ago, or even one, would rarely have seemed within the outer limits of reasonableness. But there are limits in a world of high taxes. Much remains to be done to reach the best provisions possible where mutual interests beyond some point become conflicting. For private pension systems Con- gress, in September 1974, after years of consideration, enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, popu- larly referred to as ERISA, with em- phasis upon higher standards for employees and often higher costs to employers. Do public pension plans also need attention in case some fail to meet proper standards? The new law requires that congressional committees report on government retirement plans by the end of 1976. The reports will presumably provide data for judging the validity of claims by some critics that some public pension plans are at least as deficient, and possibly more so, than those unsatisfactory retirement plans which had persisted in private industry. Should at least some degree of uni- formity-some minimum standards- be imposed on the multiplicity of pub- lic pension systems? As these have evolved during many years, the more than 2,000 state and local systems pre- sent an almost infinitely variegated pat- tern of qualification requirements, benefit provisions, retirement arrange- ments, financing methods, funding positions, actuarial bases, and vesting provisions. Although the diversity may reflect wise adaptation to differences in conditions, not all employees may be provided for as well as reasonably pos- sible (with due recognition of the costs to the taxpayer-employer). Some pen- sion experts have reportedly expressed the view that a simple and effective de- vice for coping with apparent weak-

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