IPERS in trouble? Bail it out (with taxpayer's money)

The Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System is in trouble. So let's just bail it out with taxpayer's money.

Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, declined to take a stance yet on specific revisions. But his colleague, Iowa Senate President Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg, suggested Wednesday that changes could be made in rules and incentives allowing early retirement and that increased contributions by taxpayers and government workers could be required.

A retirement fund that people pay into* and the managers make lousy decisions and it lost money. They want the taxpayers of Iowa to be on the hook for this. Outrageous.

Here's a lie:

Brad Hudson, a lobbyist for the Iowa State Education Association, which represents Iowa schoolteachers, said IPERS is "a fair system, but by no means is it lavish." He noted that unlike most private-sector defined-benefit pension plans, which are funded solely by employers, the IPERS plan is funded 40 percent by employees.

Most? I don't think so. My current plan is 100% my contributions until I'm there a year and then only 50% of what I put in is matched by my employer. Between my wife and I, there is only one employer that we had that contributed 100% and that was a scheme to purchase it's own stock.

Maybe the Register is trying to slant the story a little?


*(Disclosure: I am part of this system as a former employee of a county-run hospital and I'm trying to get my money out. An no, I do not want the taxpayers to bail it out. I pay taxes in this state, too)