Kentucky Pension Crisis Goes Nuclear As Teacher Retirements Surge 64% Over Last Year

Wednesday, October 11, 2017
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Oct 11, 2017

As Kentucky’s Governor Matt Bevin and legislators attempt to design a pension reform bill that will save the state’s various public pension plans from literally running of cash in “three to five years,” or worse yet bankrupting their state, some teachers and other public employees have decided they’re not going to wait around to negotiate and instead turned in their retirements notices to lock in their current benefit structures.

As the Carrier-Journal points out today, Kentucky’s Teachers’ Retirement System saw a 64% surge in teacher retirements YoY in the month of September. Meanwhile, system-wide retirements increased a staggering 37.4% in September and are up 23% so far in October.

The number of public employees deciding to retire has surged in recent weeks as the governor and legislative leaders prepare to enact a pension reform plan this fall.

The Teachers’ Retirement System has received applications of 120 members who have decided to retire on Nov. 1. That’s up 64 percent over the 73 members who retired on Nov. 1 of last year.

And Kentucky Retirement Systems reported this week that 677 state and local government employees across Kentucky have submitted notices they will retire this month, an increase of about 23 percent over the 551 retirements the system saw in October of last year.

The increase at KRS was even larger in September when 746 employees decided to retire — a jump of 37.4 percent over September 2016.

Beau Barnes, deputy executive secretary and general counsel for the Teachers’ Retirement System, said, “I’ve not spoken with (the retirees) so I don’t know exactly why we see the increase. But we’ve been getting lots of calls here from members concerned about what’s going on.”

The Rest…HERE

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