Milwaukee Post
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/846247
July 7, 2017 • Milwaukee County Post • 5 MILWAUKEE | OZAUKEE | WASHINGTON | WAUKESHA M A R K E T I N F O R M AT I O N AVA I L A B L E MILWAUKEE POST • M MAGAZINE • OZAUKEE NEWS GRAPHIC • OZAUKEE COUNTY GUIDE • HARTFORD TIMES PRESS WASHINGTON COUNTY DAILY NEWS • WASHINGTON COUNTY POST • WAUKESHA FREEMAN • OCONOMOWOC ENTERPRISE • HOMES PLUS BROOKFIELD & ELM GROVE THIS MONTH • GREATER MILWAUKEE JOBS • LAKE COUNTRY THIS MONTH L E A D I N G T H E W A Y I N C O M M U N I T Y J O U R N A L I S M F O R N E A R LY 5 0 Y E A R S Did You Know We Are a Part of… MILWAUKEE — After a com- prehensive exam of the coun- ty's pension system that con- firmed systemic errors span- ning decades, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele announced June 29 the launch of a Retirement Sustainability Taskforce charged with study- ing comprehensive reforms that will ensure retirement security for future retirees and long-term fiscal sustainability for the county. The task force meetings will be facilitated by the Public Policy Forum and will also include technical assistance from subject matter experts like The Pew Charitable Trusts' public sector retire- ment systems project. "Our current pension system is overly complicated and unsustainable. It has been proven incapable of providing the accuracy and consistency our workers and taxpayers deserve. I am not willing to leave the retirement security of our future retirees up to this failed system," Abele said in a news release. "The recent examination of the system confirmed systemic errors dat- ing back to at least 1979. Clearly, the County's past strat- egy of ad-hoc reform does not work." Although the current admin- istration has caught and fixed dozens of errors, the continued complexity of the system, which has more than 2,000 variations, requires manual calcuations which are ripe for interpretation and other errors. While the Pension Board has implemented major reforms to bring the system in line with national best practices, the county's unfunded pension lia- bilities have grown to $515 mil- lion and that number will only get higher. The task force will consider multiple options, including, but not limited to, a move to the state system, the release said. County task force launched to fix pension system Abele says systemic errors dating back to at least 1979 uncovered Abele