Plan to Replace Mississippi PERS Board With Political Appointees Dies in Committee

A bill already passed by the Mississippi House would have replaced the current board, which public employees elect, amid controversy over increased pension fund contributions.

A measure to replace the current member-elected board of the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi with one appointed mostly by state officials failed to advance from a Mississippi Senate committee on Tuesday. The Mississippi Legislature website lists the bill’s disposition as “dead.”

House Bill 1590, passed by the Mississippi House of Representatives on March 13, faced a Tuesday deadline for action in the Mississippi Senate Government Structure Committee, but Chairman Chris Johnson did not call the bill up for consideration. Mississippi House of Representatives Speaker Jason White, in a statement, labeled the decision “irresponsible.”

HB 1590 would have replaced the 10-member PERS board with an 11-person panel made up of four members appointed by the Mississippi governor, three by the lieutenant governor, two by PERS membership, the state treasurer and the state commissioner of revenue (who is also appointed by the governor).

Currently, the board is made up of 10 board members, eight of whom are elected by PERS membership. The board, in a statement released in March, portrayed the bill as an “attempt to politicize the PERS board.”

The measure was intended to overturn the current board’s plan to increase the fixed employer contribution rate to the PERS pension fund to 22.4% from 17.4% over three years, with the potential for further increases as high as 27.4% by July 2028.

PERS manages $31.6 billion in assets as of fiscal 2023, which ended on June 30, 2023. PERS had a funded status of 56.1% at the end of the fiscal year, a decrease from 61.3% the prior fiscal year. According to PERS, there are 300,000 beneficiaries of the system, roughly 10% of Mississippi’s population.