As state and local government employees — including some 110,000 in Hampton Roads — dug deeper to contribute to their pension plans last year, surging financial markets finally bumped the totals in the Virginia Retirement System’s pension trust funds above where they stood before the Great Recession.
But those sums still aren’t enough to make VRS executives, or the financial experts who advise them, comfortable that it has the resources it needs to pay pensions and retirement benefits far into the future.
VRS’ main fund, a $55 billion pool of stocks, bonds and real estate investments, can cover about 65.6 percent of what insurance statisticians say it is going to have to pay by the time the last of its 324,000 participants and 164,000 retirees pass away, its latest annual report disclosed. Ideally, pension fund advisers like to see 100 percent funding, but they say 80 percent can suffice.
Was the amount the state owes the VRS calculated into these figures? Part of the problem with VRS is that the General Assembly refused to fund it to recommended levels. Now who pays the piper? The participants.
Despite the dooming and glooming, the VRS remains a good pension. It used to be considered one of the best in the nation. Too bad the politicians ruined it, then tipped in it like it was their own ATM. Time to pay the piper, General Assembly.
