Mississippi Today
Bill stripping authority from PERS board dies after commitment to delay rate hike
Bill stripping authority from PERS board dies after commitment to delay rate hike
House leaders quietly let die a bill that would have stripped some of the authority of the board that oversees the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System.
The bill died Feb. 9, a deadline day, when House Appropriations Chair John Read, R-Gautier, did not call it up for consideration.
The action, or lack of action, came one day after House Speaker Philip Gunn received a letter from PERS Executive Director Ray Higgins saying the retirement system board would likely vote in an upcoming meeting to delay increasing the employer contribution rate.
The board had voted by a 7-3 margin in December 2022 to increase the rate paid by state agencies, school districts and local governments from 17.4% of an employees paycheck to 22.4%.
The board’s December decision had caused consternation with legislators and local governmental entities because of the additional cost of the rate increase.
READ MORE: Lawmakers ponder stripping state retirement system authority after board votes to raise rates
Higgins wrote to Gunn he believed the board in an upcoming meeting would ratify his suggestion to postpone the rate increase from October 2023 to July 2024.
“This change will provide more time for planning while remaining consistent with actuarial recommendations and acting in the best interest of the membership to ensure the plan is properly funded long term,” Higgins wrote to Gunn. “We will also discuss the potential and cost of phasing in the rate increase.”
Higgins recently told members of the Senate Finance Committee the rate increase was needed to ensure the long-term viability of the system. The Public Employees Retirement System currently has more than 300,000 members either working currently or in the past in state or local governments .
Under state law, increasing the rate state and local governments pay into the system is “the only lever” the PERS Board has to address funding shortfalls. The House bill would have given the Legislature the final say on rate increases.
The action of the board to increase the rate by 5% to 22.04% would have costs state and local governmental entities, including school districts and higher education entities, $345 million annually, including $265 million for state agencies and education entities.
In the letter, Higgins said the board also would provide recommendations to the Legislature on how to deal with some of he funding issues, such as changing the benefits for new employees. Higgins had told a Senate committee recently changing the benefits for new employees would help long-term, but would not provide any immediate relief.
The system’s current full-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. Theoretically, it is recommended that retirement systems have a funding ratio of about 80%.
Higgins said the system is stressed by the fact that additional benefits were added for employers in the late 1990s and early 2000s without a method to pay for those benefits.
In addition, the current governmental workforce is shrinking while the number of retirees in the system is growing. Higgins said during the past 10 years the governmental workforce is down by about 10%, while the number of retirees has increased by more than 25%.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1906
Jan. 22, 1906
Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.
While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”
In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.
She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.
In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.
After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Stories Videos
Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1921
Jan. 21, 1921
George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.
His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.
The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.
Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.
In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.
“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.
Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.
In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.
That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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