Retirement System Reform 012210 (audio)

Air Date:01/22/2010

By: Eryn Clement

A state Senate committee approved a plan to limit annual increases in retirement benefits in hopes of improving the South Dakota Retirement System’s financial condition.

After much deliberation, the Retirement Laws Committee passed three bills which aim at helping the retirement system recover from investment losses that have taken place over the past two years. Despite The Retirement System’s assets falling more than twenty percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30, more than half of the losses have been recovered in the past six months. Rob Wiley is the Executive Director at the South Dakota Retirement System. He says the Retirement System's recovery is also due to exceptional success in previous years.

“Fortunately in South Dakota, we had outstanding performance prior to that two-thousand eight drop and so we were positioned well with reserves that were prefunded and put in a situation that the well funded plan before we had the difficult time to the market place,” says Wiley.

The three bills now move to the full Senate for debate.

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