Rebounding with a strong stock market, the state’s pension fund finished the 2009 calendar year at $23 billion – up by $2.7 billion for the year.<\/p>\n
State Treasurer Denise Nappier issued the results late Friday afternoon – one day after the release of a report by the Pew Center On The States that said that Connecticut’s pension fund was the fifth worst in the nation for underfunding its obligations. The Pew report analyzed the results of pension funds in all 50 states through 2008, while Nappier revealed the latest results that benefited from the strong Wall Street performance in 2009.<\/p>\n
“Since July 1, 2009, our state’s pension funds have realized strong investment performance, returning 15.25 percent,” Nappier said. “For the entire 2009 calendar year, it generated an average return of 19.82 percent. This turn-around was a dramatic improvement over the market downturns we saw earlier in 2009, and potentially very good news for state taxpayers and the approximately 160,000 pension plan beneficiaries and participants.”<\/p>\n
While unemployment has remained high at the state and national levels, many Wall Street firms have returned to profitability. <\/p>\n
Some of the best-performing categories in the pension fund were emerging market equities, which was up more than 74 percent, and high yield bonds, which were up 50 percent, Nappier said. Emerging market debt was up by 37.70 percent.<\/p>\n
So far this year, the results have been solid.<\/p>\n
“These strong early investment results for fiscal year 2010 put us on a path that takes the edge off last fiscal year’s double-digit negative returns as a result of the historic market downturns of the “Great Recession,” said Nappier.<\/p>\n
For the calendar year that ended on December 31, 2009, the State Employees’ Retirement Fund was up by 20.2 percent, while the Teachers’ Retirement Fund was up by 19.93 percent. The Municipal Employees’ Retirement Fund increased by 18.08 percent.<\/p>\n
The results are a sharp improvement from the major nosedive that started in mid-September 2008 with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment banking firm and financial problems at major firms like Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch. The economy tumbled into recession and has been struggling to recover ever since.<\/p>\n
Nappier told Capitol Watch on Friday night that she was not surprised by the Pew Center on the States report about the state’s under funding of the pension fund. She believes strongly in making reforms – beyond anything that the state has already done. The investment upswings, she said in an interview, can help lower the state’s need to contribute more to the fund.<\/p>\n
“My concerns about this looming liability are no secret,” Nappier said. “I have been working to shine light on this issue for more than a decade, through testimony before the General Assembly, opinion editorials, speeches and press releases. Indeed, this issue formed the backbone of my 1998 campaign for state treasurer.”<\/p>\n
She added, “Every year since I was first elected state treasurer, I have testified before the General Assembly raising concerns about the under funding. As an example, in 2001, I testified that “no single issue facing our state pension system – and the fundamental integrity of future state budgets – is more important than fully funding the state’s annual pension contributions.”<\/p>\n
In her extensive statement regarding Pew and pensions, Nappier continued, “As the Pew report clearly shows, years of under funding pension obligations and zero attention paid to post retirement benefit costs has only exacerbated our state’s financial challenges. But make no mistake, the under funding of pension funds for state employees and teachers is the consequence of poor fiscal practices that date back to the 1970s. It is important to recognize that since assuming office in 2006, Governor Rell, with the support of the General Assembly, has been a proponent of fully funding our Teachers’ Retirement Fund and honoring the collective bargaining agreement for the State Employees’ Retirement Fund, with the exception of an agreement to defer up to $200 million in contributions because of the current fiscal crisis. It is my hope that the current Pew Report will serve as a reminder that we need to stay disciplined and chart the right course to ensure that our commitment to current and future retirees remains firm. There is much work to do and additional reforms to consider as we look to the future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rebounding with a strong stock market, the state’s pension fund finished the 2009 calendar year at $23 billion – up by $2.7 billion for the year. State Treasurer Denise Nappier issued the results late Friday afternoon – one day after the release of a report by the Pew Center On The States that said that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}