WEST VIRGINIA'S RETIREMENT PROGRAMS "WORST" - Most Poorly Funded In The Nation? Worst Ratio Assets To Liabilities

(12/17/2002)

West Virginia has one of the most poorly funded public employee and teachers pension plans in the nation, according to a report from Wilshire Associates, a global investment company. . Stephen Nesbitt says a larger hunk of West Virginia's budget is going to personnel costs than other states. Wilshire's group reviewed public pension plans in all 50 states, including West Virginia's public employees and teachers retirement funds. Those two plans contain only 45 cents for every dollar owed for current and future benefits, he said. No other state has a worse ratio of assets to liabilities. The national average is 98 cents for every dollar in promised benefits. West Virginia's retirement plans were short about four-and-a-half billion dollars when Wilshire checked the numbers last month. That un-funded liability is one-and-a-half times as large as the state's nearly three billion dollar budget.

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