Tuesday, February 28, 2017

County pension payout troubles linked to Walker's tenure

I note in this strong Journal Sentinel story about more screw-ups in the operation of the Milwaukee County pension system that some of the problems extends back to Scott Walker's 2001-2010 tenure as County Executive. I wonder what his defense will be to these paragraphs:
Disclosure of the 2014 report to the IRS, and the recent six-figure overpayment to a surviving spouse, come less than three months after the county had to pay out $11 million to make up for pension underpayments to nearly 1,300 county retirees that started 15 years ago. After adjusting the payments, the county expects to distribute an additional $6 million to those retirees over their projected life expectancy.
Those mistakes were made between 2001 to 2008 after county pension office workers used the wrong mortality table to calculate the payments.
The payments to those retirees were part of an IRS-approved voluntary correction plan that grew out of a 2007 report submitted to the IRS.
Of course, this is not the first time that Walker was known to be knee-deep in the County's pension quicksand, and the Journal Sentinel's Dave Umhoefer won a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing it.

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