Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to immediately start paying off the $74 billion shortfall in funding for teacher pensions was, for school districts that would bear the brunt, the big May budget surprise. On Thursday, two key lawmakers responded to districts’ calls for total relief next year by urging legislators to meet them halfway.
CalSTRS’ defined benefit plan for teachers and administrators, now two-thirds funded, would reach 70 percent of funding in 2024 and full funding in 2046, under Gov. Brown’s plan. Source: CalSTRS.
Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, who chair committees looking into the pension issue, endorsed an alternative payment plan proposed by the California State Teachers Retirement System. Instead of paying $350 million to CalSTRS in 2014-15, which is the increased amount Brown proposed, school districts would pay half that. They would make up the difference with higher payments in future years. The alternative plan would leave intact the key elements of Brown’s plan to eliminate CalSTRS’ deficit, which he outlined in the revised state budget.
During a two-hour hearing in Sacramento, education groups generally praised Brown’s overall division of responsibility among school districts, teachers and the state for making the CalSTRS pension program for teachers and administrators whole at the end of 30 years. But they said that the plan to start phasing it in on July 1 caught them unaware just when they were completing the planning process under the state’s new Local Control Funding Formula. In January, Brown had suggested higher payments would begin in 2015-16; districts built their budgets around those Lawmakers open to brief reprieve from big payments for teacher pensions | EdSource Today: