The NMI Fund Board of Trustees has warned that the Public School System\u2019s exemption from paying the increased retirement contribution would negatively impact the retirement claims of its own employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the law] would create a devastating impact on the current members of the PSS. You know that when people want to retire, they want to know what their earnings would be and chances are, they [PSS personnel] would be asking, \u2018Why is my pension only this much?\u2019\u201d said Fund board chair Joseph Reyes.<\/p>\n
Further, he said that it would cause the Fund to incur costs to recalculate the PSS\u2019 employees\u2019 retirement benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have enough problems right now on class 1 and 2 [merging]. It also costs money. I\u2019m not anti-PSS. I support PSS. But this law might be screwing up the future financial security of a person who has vested or earned retirement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rather than just citing lack of funding to pay the increased retirement contribution, he said that PSS\u2019 spending should better be checked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be interesting to know the cost, comparative earning, salary, number of personnel in the administration of PSS, and how much they make, other expenses like vehicles and a lot more, including supplies. The management should look into their cost-cutting measures so that they can carry out the mandate to educate our kids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes earlier criticized the law as unfair and discriminating since it favors only PSS.<\/p>\n
The Fund raised the government\u2019s employer contribution rate from 24 percent to 36.7 percent following a 2003 actuarial study that recommended such a step.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are mandated by law to collaborate and adopt the findings of an actuarial study because we are obligated as a board to have the Fund funded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The PSS earlier sought for an exemption but the Fund denied it. This led to a lawmaker introducing House Bill 14-369, granting PSS exemption from the increase.<\/p>\n
PSS earlier reasoned that an increased rate should not be \u201cpenalized\u201d for the additional rate because it has been paying its obligations to the Fund on time\u2014unlike the central government.<\/p>\n
PSS officials had also said that it would negatively affect PSS funding for certain programs.<\/p>\n
For its part, the Fund said that the rate should have actually been raised to 39.4 percent beginning FY 2003 as recommended in the actuarial study, \u201cbut the board suspended such implementation because of budgetary constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n
The central government currently owes the Fund $85 million in employer contributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NMI Fund Board of Trustees has warned that the Public School System\u2019s exemption from paying the increased retirement contribution would negatively impact the retirement claims of its own employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}