The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Pensions costing state $1.93B a year
Connecticut’s annual pension payments top $1.93 billion a year, according to the state’s new open-data portal, detailing payments to each of more than 52,466 retired state employees or their surviving spouses.
The data indicate that while most retirees — more than 39,000 — live in Connecticut, thousands more live in Maine, New York, the Carolinas, Massachusetts and Florida, the Sunshine State, where 4,860 moved after leaving state service.
While the average pension is $36,826, about 430 former employees make more than $100,000 a year. Fourteen make more than $200,000 annually, led by Dr. Jack Blechner a former member of the UConn Health Center faculty who makes $313,275.96. the site reports.
Previously, information on pension recipients was released annually, but state Comptroller Kevin Lembo said the new “OpenPension” site, entered through the “OpenConnecticut” portal, will be updated monthly. It’s part of an overall attempt by Lembo and his office to provide more data on state spending and payroll data, he said.
“As Connecticut faces persistent immediate and longterm financial challenges, “OpenConnecticut” will continue to expand and serve as a source for policy makers and the public so that we can have informed debates in finding solutions,” Lembo said in a statement. “OpenConnecticut will never be complete – it will always remain a work in progress as we continue to find new ways to expand access to government data,” Lembo said. “I look forward to continue growing this site and other initiatives that bring Connecticut residents closer to government.”
The site opened on a day that the state’s Commission on Pension Sustainability grappled with the publicpension crisis. With underfunded liabilities of about $100 billion in the state employee and teacher-pension programs, it’s one of the huge challenges facing Ned Lamont when he takes over as governor on Jan. 9.
To prop up the critically under-funded pension program for public school teachers, soon-to-retire state Treasurer Denise Nappier suggested using about $1.5 billion in lottery revenue, and selling off an nearly equal amount of state assets, to help out.
Part of the problem, commission members agree, were that the expectations of state officials for returns on investment that were overly optimistic. While they were projected at 8 percent, the actual returns should have been estimated at rates closer to 7 percent.
“We did not change the investment return assumption,” said Nappier, a member of the commission, during a morning meeting in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. “That really hurt us. You compound the problem when you have an unrealistic return assumption.”
“The markets are looking at us and saying that Connecticut is not fixing this,” said Michael Imber, a financial adviser who is a member of the commission. “We need leaders to come in and say we want to implement reform because it’s the right thing to do.”
State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, chairman of the commission, said that after the next General Assembly takes office next month, the panel will try to come to some conclusions and make recommendations. “I think we’re at least warming up to things we can say about policy,” he said.