(The Center Square) – The Public Retirement Systems’ Actuarial Committee met Wednesday to review and evaluate reports on four major state retirement systems in Louisiana.
Kenneth Herbold, a member of the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office, said the job of the committee is to essentially recreate the reports of other auditors represented by Herbold for these retirement systems prepared for fiscal year ended June 30.
Once they do so, they must evaluate the audits before finalizing and approving their reports as well as analyzing it to find ways to improve for the upcoming year.
The four state retirement systems the committee looked at were the State Employees’ Retirement Fund, the Teachers’ Retirement System, the School Employees’ Retirement System, and the State Police Retirement System.
For all four, investments increased from previous fiscal years, causing assets to go up and liabilities to go down.
The state employees retirement fund saw an increase of about $1.5 billion in their net positions restricted for pensions, which is total assets plus deferred outflows minus total liabilities plus deferred inflows.
A report from the system said they had over $12 million in annual savings through internal portfolio management, mostly due to the funded ratio increasing, meaning the percentage the state pays of their liabilities up front.
The teacher retirement system’s net position increased $1.3 billion, with liabilities decreasing and benefit payments and refunds increasing both at a steady rate.
However, member contributions have also went up for teachers, and although it went down for retired state employees, the cost to current employees also went up with their employers.
The retired school employees system saw more of the same with liabilities going down and assets going up, increasing the ratio by nearly 4%.
For state police, the ratio also increased but barely because of an increase in both assets and liability. Legislators and auditors chalked that anomaly up to an increase in active and retired members of the force, and a decrease in terminated members.
Louisiana’s improvement in unfunded liabilities is mostly because of the legislative focus on the issue, with previous legislation allocating surplus funds time and time again to retirement funds.
“This was a great year for the system,” said Greg Curran, an actuarial consultant and member of the committee. “I believe the reform legislation has done it’s job.”
All four retirement system audits were approved by the committee.
