PA mayors work overtime to fix pensions
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
By: Scott Detrow
scott_detrow@pubradionews.net
Mayors from across Pennsylvania say the General Assembly needs to act quickly to pass pension reform, or the commonwealth's cities and municipalities will face steep fiscal problems.
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Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl says his city's pension plan lost 93 million dollars last year.
Noting cities and municipalities across the commonwealth have experienced heavy losses in the bad economy, he says lawmakers need to pass measures to help local governments restructure the ways they fund and distribute pensions.
Ravenstahl says one solution is letting cities consolidate plans, noting more than three thousand municipalities are funding programs right now.
Ravenstahl: Each of those 31-hundred plans has a pension fund manager and people who work on that pension plan. So simply efficiencies of scales and the costs it would save for municipalities and governments to consolidate, I think is why that makes the most sense as we look at it for one of our four-point plans.
Ravenstahl, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and other executives also want the General Assembly to restructure the state pension aid formula, and ban employees from manipulating pension payouts by spiking overtime hours.