More than $427 million in state aid is being distributed to municipal pension plans across Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Auditor General Timothy DeFoor announced that 1,441 municipalities and regional departments received a total of $427,788,682 to support retirement plans for police officers, paid firefighters and non-uniformed municipal employees.<\/p>\n
DeFoor said the funding helps municipalities meet their retirement obligations to former employees while easing the burden on local taxpayers.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s allocation also includes the first cost-of-living adjustment for municipal police officers and firefighters since 2002.<\/p>\n
The state aid is funded through a two-percent tax on fire and casualty insurance policies sold in Pennsylvania by out-of-state companies. The amount available for distribution varies from year to year.<\/p>\n
Municipal pension plans receiving state assistance are subject to audits by the Department of the Auditor General to ensure the money is used in accordance with state law.<\/p>\n
The largest share of this year\u2019s funding, approximately $181.9 million, went to the Southeast and Greater Philadelphia region. The Susquehanna Valley received approximately $65.3 million, while the Northeast received approximately $29.4 million.<\/p>\n
Municipalities can review their individual pension aid allocations by county through the Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM pointed out, \u201cSo you pay taxes, or they take a slice out of this fee that you\u2019re paying to these fire and casualty folks, and then we\u2019re going to repurpose $427 million to try to keep some of these pension programs solvent. If I\u2019m looking at Social Security, you guys want to put a haircut on that in 2035? If it didn\u2019t last that long, how about we take a little bit of that money and plug that over there? It seems a little bit unfair to those folks that are facing, I\u2019ve got to pay my social security. I\u2019ve got to pay this fee, which is being tapped to me from out of state. Or fine, all right. I\u2019m getting a lot of state people getting policies here. Somebody\u2019s paying, and I think you\u2019ve got a room to put some of that money into Social Security.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, \u201cThis is a 2% tax on fire and casualty insurance policies sold in Pennsylvania that create this money and this is a big number.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The COLA in this year\u2019s allocation is also a big deal.<\/p>\n
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Barkdoll said, \u201cThat\u2019s of course adding to these costs, but over 1400 municipalities will get this. Some locally, of course, will come into this money too. But the irony of it is what you\u2019re touching on: Social Security is insolvent. PSERS, the SERS plans, they\u2019re way underfunded. But yet, here\u2019s this real windfall that\u2019s going to come into these municipalities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ryan added, \u201cAnd if we\u2019re short in Pennsylvania, then the taxpayers are on the hook to fill that void.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM noted, \u201cThe fact that the state is doing this and it\u2019s been done, this isn\u2019t the first time they\u2019ve given additional funds for the municipal pensions. But see, I\u2019ve heard the argument before. Well, the municipal pensions are different, that we have to mine those carefully and make sure that we\u2019re responsibly taking care of them because it\u2019s not the same as PSERS or SERS. Well, in a way, it is, isn\u2019t it? If the state is reaching over and taking fees and taxes that guess what? Ultimately come out of all the taxpayers\u2019 pockets to shore up the municipal pensions, well, then really aren\u2019t the taxpayers basically on the hook to make sure? And yes, I get it, and we\u2019ll always hear this: our firemen and our policemen, are doing this fantastic job, don\u2019t they deserve to have a sure pension? But we are a state that\u2019s going broke, and there\u2019s going to be growing resentment from those who don\u2019t get a government pension towards those who do, and remember, most of these people also get social security. So this is not a good sign that we have to go and find extra money to shore up municipal pensions, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Barkdoll said, \u201cIt\u2019s public money ultimately. And in theory, these municipal pensions are backstopped by local government, local taxpayers. But if they\u2019re insolvent, then you have these scenarios where the state government is still going to step in to provide a safety net. So any way you cut it, it\u2019s taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than $427 million in state aid is being distributed to municipal pension plans across Pennsylvania. Auditor General…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130581,130582,7165,95347,28,30,29,28238,32403],"class_list":["post-321903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-130581","tag-distributes","tag-million","tag-municipal","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pension","tag-plans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}