Another story in the continuing concerns over government pensions is evidenced in the following story at the Courier-Journal. Interestingly enough, the CJ also ran a story on how effective our state auditor, Crit Luallen, has been in watching/auditing the state's books. Might be wise to marry up the two concerns and have Crit's office conduct some audits of the Judicial Retirement System, the Court House Construction projects, the teacher's retirement system, and any other state administered retirement system.
I am mindful of the costs in conducting such an inquirey, but I am also mindful that an ounce of prevention may be a better cure now than later. Too much cross-leveling of state dollars in various programs from education, to stimulus, to "layoffs", etc. cannot help make the average taxpayer wonder what's happening with his tax dollars. When you add the governmental appointments of legislators who get hefty retirement increases from the job changes and the senior status judge's program sunset appointments which adds what appears to be a non-actuarial burden one cannot help but raise their eyebrows looking for an independent audit from a trustworthy source. That would be Crit.
Here's the story:
Teachers want retirement fund debt paid off
The state has been writing IOUs to the teachers’ pension fund for the past six years to cover retirees’ health insurance costs, and officials are increasingly worried that it won’t ever be able to pay up.
Crit Luallen Frankfort's fiscal enforcer
The following article appears in the November issue of Governing magazine, a national publication focusing on state and regional government issues. Every year since 1994, Governing has honored individual state and local government officials for outstanding accomplishment by naming them Public Officials of the Year. More
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