Op-Ed: Pennsylvania Pension Reform: Consolidation is Not the Answer
David M. Sanko, executive director of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, argues that consolidating municipal pension plans into one statewide system would penalize well-run plans to reward troubled, underfunded ones.
Pennsylvania’s pension funding problem didn’t happen overnight, and you can’t fix it overnight. Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz about pension reform, and rightfully so. Pennsylvania is on the fast track to a crisis. The commonwealth’s pension programs for some 800,000 state workers and public school teachers are in the hole to the tune of $40 billion, a figure that’s expected to climb to $65 billion by 2021 if lawmakers don’t do something soon. Hastened by Gov. Tom Corbett, the General Assembly and others are searching for solutions, some of which have come to light during a series of fact-finding meetings hosted by the Pennsylvania Employee Retirement Commission. The hearings have focused on the state’s financial predicament, which …
