'Pension relief' bill still pending on legislature's final day, with much at stake
When state lawmakers return to Frankfort Thursday for the last day of the 2019 General Assembly, the biggest issue still sitting on their plates also will be the hardest to swallow.
How much pension relief should they provide to the state’s regional universities and “quasi-public” entities, such as county health departments, mental health nonprofits, rape crisis centers, and other groups that are technically outside state government?
If the General Assembly does nothing, requiring these entities to fund their full share of the state’s $37 billion pension shortfall, then their contribution rates will explode when the next fiscal year begins July 1. Instead of paying 49 percent of each employee’s salary into the Kentucky Retirement Systems as a pension contribution, they will have to pay 84 percent.
That would require deep spending cuts and dramatic tuition increases at Eastern Kentucky University, Morehead State University and other regional universities and the closure of many essential local programs, including 64 county health departments in the next two years, officials at those agencies have warned. (The University of Kentucky and University of Louisville have their own retirement plans outside of KRS and would not be affected.)
Read more: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article228418929.html