BGR Criticizes City’s Decision to Increase Pension Benefits

By Rich Collins

June 30, 2021

NEW ORLEANS – The Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit watchdog group, has released a report on the City of New Orleans’ decision last fall to increase pension benefits by 32% for all future hires and retroactively for about 1,000 employees hired since 2018. This reversed a benefit reduction plan enacted three years earlier.

BGR said its analysis of the pension increases reveals “significant problems with virtually every aspect of the decision-making process.”

BGR’s report concludes that the “more generous benefits significantly exceed the national norm for public pension systems that participate in Social Security, such as the City’s,” and that the retirement system’s plan for closing an existing $300 million gap between its assets and employees’ accrued benefits “places the entire financial burden on the public in the form of large annual catch-up contributions for at least the next 25 years.”

A two-page summary of the report is available here.

The full report is available here.

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