Mississippi Today
Legislative leaders ask about suspending PERS ’13th check’ increases, though they say it’s unlikely
The possibility of temporarily pausing or reducing the annual 3% cost of leaving increase Mississippi’s state and local government retirees receive was discussed recently by legislative leaders.
The discussions came during a recent meeting the 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee held with Ron Higgins, the executive director of the Public Employee Retirement System. After the meeting, legislators indicated that they do not favor limiting or changing the annual 3% cost of living increase, though the fact it was discussed highlights the trouble legislators face grappling with ensuring the financial viability of the public employee retirement system.
Some key legislative leaders indicated that they are reluctant to allow taxpayer funds to be pumped into the public pension program at the level members of the governing board say may be needed to ensure its long-term financial viability.
Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, asked if suspending the annual 3% cost of living increase for three years would solve the financial woes facing PERS, which provides pensions for most state and local government employees, including educators.
“I wouldn’t use the phrase solve all the problems, but it definitely would have a major impact,” said Higgins. “… Something like that has a direct impact on the unfunded liability.”
Afterwards, Kirby said he was only gathering information, but said that any such suspension, “I don’t think is on the table,” and that he personally would not support it.
Making any changes to reduce or suspend the annual 3% cost of living increase most likely would create an uproar among current employees and retirees. Many of the retirees take the annual 3% increase as a so-called “13th check” at the end of the calendar year.
READ MORE: PERS will ask Legislature for cash, consider changes to ’13th check’
The 10-member board of trustees of the Public Employee Retirement System has voted to increase the amount the state and local governments contribute to employees’ paychecks for retirement from 17.4% to 19.4% beginning on July 1, with another planned 2% increase. The board left open the possibility of increasing the amount the governmental entities contribute to each paycheck for retirement to 27% over a period of time.
Various legislative leaders said the increases could be difficult for the government entities to sustain, particularly local governments. They predict local governments would have to lay off employees and cut services to sustain such an increase in the amount they contribute to employees’ retirement.
House Pro Tem Jason White, R-West, said other options much be considered. White also asked had the Board looked at some type of reduction in the annual cost of living increases.
“I think there has been a commitment at least around the coffee pot … that we (legislators) want to fix this long term and we want your board to be part of the solution,” White told Higgins“… For myself, I would say we are not going to just increase it (the amount of government money put into the plan) 5%, 10% and hope it gets better.”
After the meeting, White told Mississippi Today: “I am not advocating for any specific change to PERS. My concern is for its long-term sustainability. We’ve had good conversations with Ray Higgins. He understands our cities and counties cannot afford a 50% increase in their employer contribution. Also, taxpayers are asking lots of questions on the subject during the campaign season so it’s a hot topic as you already know.”
In recent years, efforts have been made to improve the system’s financial viability that has been negatively impacted by multiple factors, including a decrease in the number of government employees. A reduction in the public sector workforce means less funds for the system.
Higgins stressed that PERS does not face immediate financial woes, but that the governing board has “a fiduciary responsibility” to ensure the pension plan remains solvent. He said the longer officials wait to address financial issues with the system, the more difficult it will be to do so.
The PERS board has also advocated for an annual payment into the system in state funds in addition to the payment contributed to each employee paycheck. Kirby said he was not enamored with the possibility of an “infusion” of additional state funds into the system. Kirby also said he understands the concerns expressed by the board about the possible financial stress facing PERS, but he questioned whether the issues facing the system are as dire as some believe they are.
PERS is providing or will provide benefits to about 325,000 members, including current employees, retirees and others who used to work in the public sector but no longer do.
The system’s current funding ratio is about 61%, meaning it has the assets to pay the benefits of 61% of all the people in the system, ranging from the newest hires to those already retired. Of course, all of the people in the system will not retire at once. Theoretically, though, it is recommended that retirement systems have a funding ratio of 80% or more.
The system is underfunded by roughly $20 billion.
While legislators expressed concern about pumping a large sum of additional funds into the retirement plan, they also indicated they understand the importance of the system that impacts roughly 10% of the state’s population.
“This is a state obligation, and we are damn well going to fund it,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who is chair of the Legislative Budget Committee.
White said, “My parents are retired Mississippi educators. My wife also is a state retiree. I understand and appreciate the retirees and the duty we owe them. However, we cannot ignore the $19 billion hole that exists. My comments are pointed toward all stakeholders having an adult conversation on this issue and trying to collectively put PERS on a path to viability and sustainability. No other motivation.”
The PERS board plans to recommend to the Legislature changing the benefits for new hires, including even limiting cost of living increases at times based on the financial condition of the plan.
But it is not clear whether legislators could change the cost of living increases that the governmental entities committed to for current employees and retirees.
Rep. Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg, asked if the state could legally make a change in the cost of living increases for current employees and retirees.
“Historically, the legal comment generally speaking no you cannot make changes,” Higgins said. “… Other states have made changes to current benefits. The landscape might have changed. But the prevailing and historical comment is you cannot make those changes.”
There have been court decisions, including in Mississippi, ruling that to make changes in benefits for current employees and retirees would be breaking a contractual commitment.
Higgins stressed, “anytime we (PERS Board members) have … analyzed the COLA always (it has been) in the context only if needed to maintain the fiscal integrity of the plan.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=293953
Mississippi Today
Podcast: This Mississippi elected official wants his office off the statewide ballot
Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau and Bobby Harrison discuss Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney’s recent proposal to change his office’s traditionally elected position to an appointed one. Chaney is not the first Mississippi elected official to suggest such a bold step, and the politics of the state could make this debate a fiery one in 2025.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1955
Sept. 23, 1955
An all-white, all-male jury in the Mississippi Delta acquitted J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant of murdering Emmett Till after deliberating 67 minutes. One juror told a reporter that they wouldn’t have taken so long if they hadn’t stopped to drink a Coke.
Milam and Bryant stood before photographers, lit up cigars and kissed their wives in celebration of the not guilty verdict. Months later, the half-brothers admitted to Look magazine that they had indeed killed Till.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Book excerpt: ‘The Barn’ by Wright Thompson
Editor’s note: Wright Thompson’s “The Barn” is the story of the place where Emmett Till was tortured to death in the summer of 1955, and a thousand-year history of the dirt surrounding that barn, an attempt to map the forces that drove a mob of white men to kill a Black child. It follows the curdling of the Mississippi Delta as the global cotton markets rise and then, starting in 1920, collapse. This is one story among many.
On Friday, December 14, 1923, a sharecropper outside Drew named Joe Pullum went to visit his plantation manager, Tom Sanders, to settle his annual accounts. Pullum carried a .38-caliber revolver. He’d learned to shoot fighting with the famous U.S. Army Buffalo Soldiers in the hills of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. When he returned home to farm, he lived with his family in a small tenant house east of town. The crop had been harvested and now came the tense settlement day. The only input a farmer controlled was the price of labor, a fundamental that remains true today, and for some men the temptation to cheat people with no legal recourse remained too great. Settlement day was an annual test of honesty and honor and most men failed. Pullum already suspected his boss would try to cheat him.
It had been another terrible year, the third in a row. Rain fell for nearly the entire cotton season and many farmers picked the worst crop they’d picked in decades, ten acres to make one bale in some places instead of three bales an acre. These plagues of sun and sky felt biblical. Banks wanted money or land from farmers. A third fewer bales got picked statewide and many farmers just abandoned the crop in the fields rather than pick at a loss. The jarring sign of untouched cotton in winter haunted the memories of farmers for a generation. It was the smallest crop in fifty years. That was a problem for management.
Pullum wanted his money.
Sanders said Pullum owed him fifty dollars.
They began to shout at each other. Nobody knows who drew his weapon first. Sanders and his manager, John Manning, stood on a back porch. Pullum stood on the ground below them and shot both men before fleeing east towards the Brooks plantation headquarters—the same land that in five decades would become Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm.
Sanders was dead. John Manning was wounded. Pullum ran to his house and loaded his shotgun with the only ammunition he had: lightweight bird shot. The posse went to Pullum’s house. Pullum aimed at their heads because of the low-caliber bird shot. He shot R. L. Methvin in the face and killed him. He wounded another man, then slid into the Wild Bill Bayou and started trying to move his way north. His mother sharecropped on the next road to the north and, under threat, he tried to make it to her. A witness saw him cross Brooks Road to the west side of the bayou. The posse couldn’t follow him through the thick swamps, still uncleared, and lost his trail at an abandoned tenant house. For two hours they searched, until someone found boot tracks leading down into a drainage ditch that fed back into the Wild Bill Bayou. They spread out along both sides of the swamp. Joe Pullum hid in the thick undergrowth, careful like those ancient deer about where he put his feet, and he listened as they approached. His military training kicked in.
The posse got closer and closer. Pullum waited.
Finally they were within pistol range. Just a few yards away. He shot Kenneth Blackwood in the face, Luther Hughes in the head, and Bob Stringfellow in the side and the arm. He shot Archie Manning, a local cotton gin employee and ancestor of the famous quarterback, in the face and the throat. The posse emptied eight or ten boxes of ammunition into the swamp but hit nothing. Pullum slipped silently away from his pursuers, moving through the bayou toward his mom’s house on what is now Swope Road.
The posse called for help. The sheriff from my hometown of Clarksdale, along with a half dozen prominent citizens, arrived with two Browning machine guns. Other men went into Drew and loaded ten fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline onto a truck, which they drove as far as it could go into the muck. A wagon pulled by a team of four mules took it the rest of the way into the swamp. At 11:30 p.m., more than fourteen hours after the first shot was fired, the mob rolled the first barrel of gasoline into the swamp. They lit it on fire and ran down shooting wildly.
J. L. Doggett, from Clarksdale, saw something move in the darkness.
“There he is!” he shouted.
Pullum shot him immediately.
Doggett was a prominent lumberman. I knew his daughter when she was an old woman. She played bridge at the Clarksdale Country Club, in one of the rooms just off the snack bar, where kids would go to get chicken tenders and lemonade to charge to their parents‘ accounts.
“All my friends are dead and gone,” she’d say.
Back at the Wild Bill Bayou the mob rolled a second barrel of gasoline into the water. The machine guns fired belts of withering fire into the darkness. Pullum remained hidden and picked off his attackers whenever he got a clear shot. He had only a shotgun and a small pistol, so he had to get close to kill. The posse rolled a third barrel of gasoline into the swamp and lit it on fire. This time the fire made Pullum move and the machine guns opened up and cut him down. Pullum had killed at least four people and wounded at least nine, although local oral accounts put that number higher.
The posse threw his dying body on a horse and they took him to a waiting car, which drove him to town. They left him to die on the cotton platform on Main Street. His shotgun got displayed in downtown Drew. Some older Black citizens tell how their parents and grandparents told them that parts of Pullum’s body—multiple people mention his ear or ears—got displayed for decades after that in local shop windows as a warning.
After the lynching Drew and other nearby towns enforced a strict curfew for Blacks. More lines got drawn on the Delta, unmarked on any map but understood by everyone as law. Boundaries governed more and more moments and spaces, and crossing one of those boundaries would be Emmett Till’s fatal crime. When a local dance hall closed and the crowd didn’t clear fast enough, the local sheriff shot and killed seven or eight people, including two of the musicians.
The Franklin family left Sunflower County because of the killing. Their nine-year-old son, who would name his daughter Aretha, heard his parents talking about it. In nearby Webb, twenty-three miles from the barn and less from the spot where Pullum died, Mamie’s father packed up his family and moved to Chicago.
Pullum’s family disappeared. His great-grandson Thomas Pullum, who lives in Oakland, California, spends his free time trying to find out what happened to them, especially to Joe’s two sons, who were never heard from again. Thomas came to Mississippi for the first time in 1967 and sat with his grandmother in the shadow of the Wild Bill Bayou. In a quiet moment he asked her to tell him about Joe. He saw a cloud of “pain and misery” pass over her face as tears welled in her eyes. But then something strange happened. Something in her eyes changed, a defiant sparkle emerging, and she smiled and settled back into the pillows on her bed and started to tell the kids the story.
“I had heard of Mr. Joseph Pullum, your great-grandfather, all my life,” she began and told them the tale of a Black man who had the courage to say no, to stand up for himself, and when it became clear he would not survive, a man who decided to send as many of the enemy to hell as he could before they got him. Those stories are all that’s left, along with some newspaper clippings and a smudged death certificate, signed by the same local doctor who would later buy the barn where Emmett Till was tortured to death.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson will be released on Sept. 24, 2024.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed6 days ago
GA woman released from prison 20+ years after killing alleged abuser
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed7 days ago
Diddy Arrested In Manhattan | September 16, 2024 | News 19 at 10 p.m.
-
News from the South - Louisiana News Feed6 days ago
Ponchatoula homes catches fire overnight
-
News from the South - Texas News Feed3 days ago
Cocaine busts galore at southern border, including from ‘trusted traveler’ | Arizona
-
News from the South - Louisiana News Feed7 days ago
Louisiana school districts working to address teacher burnout, unpaid work | Louisiana
-
Mississippi Today1 day ago
On this day in 1927
-
Mississippi News Video5 days ago
Bicycler wanted for string of burglaries in West Point
-
News from the South - Florida News Feed3 days ago
Tracking the Tropics: Chance of tropical disturbance in Caribbean at 60%