Nebraska State Auditor: Omaha Public Schools employee pension plan getting worse
OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Scathing words from Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley -- his team concluded that the Omaha School Employees’ Pension Plan is getting worse.
It’s an enormous number -- Foley says the unfunded pension liability for Omaha Public Schools’ retirement plan exceeds $1.1 billion -- and that the solutions his team proposed one year ago have been largely ignored.
There are 15,000 people who are either paying into or collecting a pension from the retirement plan, mostly teachers. Foley says the plan is funded at 57.5 percent. For all of the other public school districts in the state, their plans are exceedingly healthy, with more than 97 percent of the liability funded.
Foley said the pension plan didn’t get this way overnight, but in his view, major changes must be made. His team has found errors in pension payouts, cost-of-living adjustments, and account balances. With so many in the retirement plan, even small errors can turn into big numbers.
“I’m very disappointed,” Foley told 6 News. “We put out a scathing report a year ago and made some noise about it thinking, ‘okay, let’s get their attention and get this fixed on the right trajectory.’ It didn’t happen. They didn’t fix the problems we addressed, and the deficit is the worst it’s been in the history of the program.”
Foley doesn’t believe the problem will be rectified unless there are significant changes. In September, Nebraska’s Public Employees Retirement Board will take over management of OSERS’s plan -- but the liability of $1.1 billion stays with the city and its taxpayers. The chief financial officer of the OPS employees’ plan sent a letter to the 15,000 OPS staff in the plan, saying he is committed to a strong, stable retirement plan for generations to come, and has been making changes. He did acknowledge that some items highlighted in last year’s audit had not been addressed, but said there will be strong procedures in place by the time the state manages this plan in the fall.
Read the auditor’s full report
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