PERS Board Tries to Hide from the Light

The Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) Board is pulling out all the stops to prevent the people who insure their benefits from finding out how much they're on the hook for.

The Reno Gazette-Journal recently won a court decision ordering PERS to release information regarding the amounts retired public employees were receiving in benefits. Yesterday the PERS Board, composed of people who either are or will be receiving benefits from PERS, decided to appeal that decision to the Nevada Supreme Court, also made up of people who will be receiving benefits from PERS.

Why not? They have nothing to lose, it's not their money they'll be spending. They'll be spending more taxpayer money to try to keep the veil on who and how much retirees from government are receiving in taxpayer-sponsored retirement benefits.

Taxpayers are obligated to make up any shortfall in the benefits these former government employees are paid. Do those same taxpayers have a right to see who is receiving them and how much?

Chris Wicker, the attorney for PERS, said the law is not that clear.

"Since the 1970s, PERS has interpreted (state laws) as treating employee files as confidential," Wicker said.

He said members of the retirement system board decided to lodge an appeal with the high court to answer this question: "Is the statute right, or is the judge right?"

This is a self-serving distortion of the question that assumes PERS' interpretation of the statute is correct, which is far from a given. This is just another instance of government attempting to keep the people who fund it in the dark about what it is doing.

Thomas Mitchell, who was at the "hearing," (scare quotes around the word in light of the fact that not much was actually heard by the public as the PERS Board used a loophole in the Open Meetings law to conduct their deliberations in private) reported on the closed-door session,

At one point Chris Collins, a Las Vegas policeman and executive director of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, could be heard loudly arguing that, while his pay might be tax money, the notion that PERS funds are tax money is “crap.” Never mind that any potential shortage in funding must be made up for by the taxpayers or that all the money contributed to PERS either directly or through salary deductions came from taxpayers. Also, PERS is a state agency.

Mitchell's exactly correct. Keeping this information private is akin to requiring someone to co-sign for a loan without letting them know what and how much it is for.

But here's an idea: If PERS recipients want to claim that tax money is not used for their benefits then, fine, let's make that explicit and codify it into law. Right now, a portion of each employee's compensation is earmarked for PERS. The employer (the State's taxpayers) also contributes a certain amount.

Unlike some other states, Nevada has been very good about making sure those funds designated for PERS actually end up in the fund. We have an unfunded liability because the amounts contributed by both employees and the State are not sufficient to cover projected benefits over time.

Here's the plan: Both the State of Nevada and its employees continue to contribute at the same rates they currently are. The law would prohibit these contribution amounts from ever increasing over their current percentage of employee pay and would also prohibit taxpayers from ever contributing any additional amounts to PERS. Ever.

PERS can never go into debt nor can taxpayers ever be forced to contribute anything above the percentage contributions. If the PERS fund runs dry, then benefits would be immediately cut, in an equal percentage amount for each recipient, so that outlays match income.

In other words, PERS recipients can have their privacy as long as taxpayers are never on the hook for any shortfall or unfunded liability.

True, it'll never work. But that just means that taxpayers have a right to see who and what they are responsible for paying.