Michael Riley: Taveras and Polisena No-Shows at Pension Commission
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Some readers would say that I am singularly focused on the issue of municipal finance and the financial condition of our cities and towns. Yesterday 500 local business leaders gathered with our Congressional delegation at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce Congressional Breakfast. I am sure all the reporters and politicians were there.
At that exact same time on Monday, I was attending the Municipal Pension Study Commission meeting, marking its 2-year anniversary and now entering its third year. The RI Municipal Pension Study Commission has more power in its hands to (favorably or adversely) affect the future of Rhode Island Citizens than our entire Congressional delegation will ever have. The potential power of this commission or the harm of missed opportunity cannot be overstated.
That being said, I was shocked when I picked up the agenda package in the senate lounge where the meeting was held. It appeared to include real information and a draft discussion document for “Recommendations to the Government and General Assembly”. Hope quickly dissipated however, and the reality of the Chafee Municipal Pension Study Commission’s lack of focus and constantly wavering sense of urgency reared its ugly head. Chafee has turned his back on the Municipal Pension Crisis and so have members, as the meeting started late and stumbled to open without a quorum. There were maybe 10 public viewers—mostly union or political staff—and me. Finally, the 8th participant Paul Doughty arrived and with a quorum, the real discussion began. Mayor Fung was first and as usual was straight to the point. He clearly described his recent interaction of months of meetings with Moody’s. Mayor Fung cares about his town and ratings. On the other hand, Mayor Taveras did not even attend and neither did Mayor Polisena of Johnston. Perhaps they attended the Congressional breakfast instead.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAs an aside, according to Moody’s and GASB metrics as presented to the commission today, the City of Providence—even after its recent “Funding Improvement Plan”—is less than 20% funded and ranks the worst of any city of over 100,000 population in the United States of America. Johnston, Rhode Island has a much smaller population but a huge problem, and is only 21% funded. Significantly, one of the first items in our packet (that Mayor Taveras and Mayor Polisena didn’t even bother to send a representative to receive) was a PowerPoint presentation describing Moody’s Rating Service’s new emphasis on pension and OPEB debt. As my readers have known for months, Moody’s has not only doubled the importance of municipal pension debt in overall rating decisions, it has described real changes in use of the discount rate assumptions capped at around 6% and a new measurement called “net pension liability”. Moody’s and GASB also discuss using market value of asset valuation as opposed to smoothing methods.
Rhode island is highlighted on page one in the report as follows:
“RI cities continue to deal with weak revenue and economic growth and large pension liabilities.”
I will continue to evaluate every city in Rhode Island at 6% discount rate to get a true reading on pension liability and funding status. Also included in the packet is a full explanation of Moody’s definitions of pension burden on the budget.
What’s next for this Commission?
The highlight of the meeting was the discussion about the next steps that this commission will take. The bullet points looked promising but quickly deteriorated as various members of the commission told us why the suggested changes could not happen.
Here are the draft suggestions:
1) Create an OPTIONAL pathway to MERS…
A) Provide one time incentives
B) Give brief period to achieve benchmarks
C) Allow for re-amortization of recalculated UAAL
D) Allow members to retain service credits
E) Provide state/school aid offset in the event of failure to fund
2) Amend Legislation related to Collective Bargaining Agreements and their fiscal impact in out years not just the current budget (impact on Pension and OPEB debt)
3) Establish Continued funding through Municipal Incentive Aid program upon meeting certain criteria
4) Provide a mechanism for continued oversight of local pension plans (and OPEB) to insure implementation of Funding Improvement Plans (FIP)
A) Develop a stakeholder group of all local plans w/ Dept of Revenue, the Auditor General and Treasury.
B) Put FIP guidelines as statute
5) Require State Investment Commission to administer programs for local pensions.
6) Include criteria that the “critical status” of a locally administered pension plan would be considered under the provisions of the fiscal Stability act.
7) Require plans comply with GASB standards for actuarial methodology.
8) Establish Penalties if a municipality does not fund its local “Required Funding Contribution”
9) Require the submission of OPEB valuations to Auditor and Division of Municipal finance annually.
10) Establish Statewide OPEB trust.
11) Require FIP funding improvement plans for OPEB.
One by one, the seven commissioners who were still left there to discuss potential “next steps” seemed resigned to the fact that after 2 years of data collection, not much had changed. Mr. Dingley, the Deputy Treasurer who represented Treasurer Raimondo, correctly asked for an update as to the status of FIP’s that were finished and submitted a year ago. To my surprise and horror, no one seemed to know. Municipal Finance Chief Susanne Greschner said they had conducted a survey of some type and all but two of the “critical status” communities responded: Providence and Cumberland. When asked what the other 15 or 16 responses where, Ms Greschner was at a loss. This was not a good government moment from my perspective and again made me think that this pension crisis is not being taken seriously by even those responsible for fixing it.
Even though several of the highlighted “next steps” suggestions are worthwhile, at this point it’s too late. There is also no consensus in the group with union representatives objecting to things like moving to Medicare at age 65. Seriously, if we can’t get that done, forget it. Even the most optimistic case presented by Director Gallogly has no summer meeting and potential legislative introduction in 2015 and implementation in 2016.
My recommendation is to give the General Auditor some teeth, including penalties and job suspensions. If Ernie Almonte had some power he would have cleaned up a lot of this mess, but all he did was repeatedly report the problems to the GA and watch the GA ignore the ongoing crisis. Secondly, I would standardize the metrics for judging fiscal stability just as I am using in my studies. The discount rate would be 6% and smoothing of assets would be disallowed. Towns that have no real plan for emerging from ”critical status” or purposely underfunded their ARC would receive just one warning before the automatic imposition of an overseer and/or budget commission. Then, and only then, can we expect the cities and towns to take this crisis seriously.
Michael G. Riley is vice chair at Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, and is managing member and founder of Coastal Management Group, LLC. Riley has 35 years of experience in the financial industry, having managed divisions of PaineWebber, LETCO, and TD Securities (TD Bank). He has been quoted in Barron’s, Wall Street Transcript, NY Post, and various other print media and also appeared on NBC news, Yahoo TV, and CNBC.