PPCC 1993 survey results.

• Author: Zorn, Paul
• Position: Public Pension Coordinating Council - Pension and Benefit Report

This article presents summary analysis of the state and local government retirement systems surveyed by the Public Pension Coordinating Council (PPCC) in the summer of 1993. The purpose of the survey was to obtain in-depth information about the current practices of public employee retirement systems regarding their administration, membership, benefits, contributions, funding, investments and reporting.

The PPCC survey collects data for the prior fiscal year (i.e., the most recent year for which accurate data was available). The major findings from the 1993 survey, when compared with the 1992 survey results, indicate that state and local government employee retirement systems are well funded and that their financial health did not change substantially between 1991 and 1992. The PPCC's 1993 survey respondents reflect a large and diverse group of public employee retirement systems in the United States, representing systems of all sizes, geographic regions, types of covered employees and administering jurisdictions. The survey provides responses from 291 state and local public employee retirement systems with 451 plans covering 9.9 million active members and holding $793 billion in assets. The respondents represent 76 percent of all active state and local plan members in FY 1992 and 83 percent of plan assets. Exhibit 1 shows the distribution of respondents by active membership and asset size.

System Administration

State and local retirement systems exist within an administrative framework that is structured by state and local laws and overseen by retirement boards of elected, appointed and ex-officio members. Retirement boards typically have substantial authority over the system and usually are involved in decisions regarding investment policy, benefit provision and actuarial assumptions. Almost half of the respondent systems (48 percent) had between five and eight retirement board members, and more than a quarter (26 percent) had between nine and 11 board members. There was almost no change in the size of retirement boards between 1991 and 1992.

The daily activities of the system usually are directed by a chief administrative officer and conducted by system staff. Staff sizes vary by size of system. Small systems (i.e., those with fewer than 1,000 active members) had staffs averaging about three full-time-equivalent employees while large systems (i.e., those with 100,000 or more active members) had staffs averaging more than 200 employees. Between 1991 and 1992, there was a slight decline in average staff size for the smaller systems (-4.5 percent) and a small increase in staff size for the larger systems (3.3 percent).

Public retirement system administrators are, in general, modestly paid officials. The annual pay for the systems' highest paid official (usually the chief...