Public Employer Pension Funding Bill Introduced

Yesterday, three Republican Congressman (Devin Nunes and Darrell Issa of California, and Paul Ryan, incoming Budget Committee Chairman from California) introduced the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act (PEPTA). Under PEPTA, sponsors of public pension plans would need to disclose the following:

• Funding status including:

• Plan's current liabilities as measured for accounting purposes
• Plan assets available to pay for that liability
• The amount of unfunded liability
• The funding percentage
• A schedule of contributions for the year indicating which are counted in disclosed plan assets

• Alternative projections based on regulation from Treasury
• 20-year forecast of 
• contributions
• plan assets
• current liability
• funding percentage
• other information required by Treasury
• Using assumptions specified in regulations
• And specifying assumptions used for
• funding policy
• plan changes
• workforce projections
• future investment returns
• Statement of actuarial assumptions and methods
• Participant counts, including active, retired and deferred vested
• 5-year history of actual investment returns
• Statement explaining how the sponsor plans to eliminate the plan's underfunding
• Statement explaining to what extent the funding policy has been followed for the last 5 years
• Statement of pension funding bonds outstanding

Failure to comply will make the sponsor ineligible to issue federally tax-exempt bonds. 

You can find the PEPTA language here: http://nunes.house.gov/_files/NUNES_068_xml.pdf

The informational posting on Congressman Nunes' web site is here: http://www.nunes.house.gov/_files/PensionTransparencyTrifold.pdf