Act 100 of 2016 transferred the responsibility to provide actuarial notes for legislation that proposes changes to public employee pension or pension plans to the Independent Fiscal Office (IFO). The IFO’s current Pension Analysis Policies is available here: http://www.ifo.state.pa.us//Resources/Documents/IFO_Pension_Analysis_Policy_2026.pdf
All actuarial notes issued by the IFO are posted on this website and available in the “Actuarial Notes” link below. The IFO also publishes statutory and special reports on pension issues in the Commonwealth available in the “Special Reports” link.
Pursuant to Act 128 of 2020, the IFO issued a report that summarizes results from the State Employee Retirement System’s (SERS) recent stress test report. Based on SERS baseline projections, the IFO projects that over the next 20 years, Commonwealth agencies will use $17.8 billion in General Fund revenues (1.5%) for employer pension contributions. Relative to baseline projections, the report also summarizes the impact from scenarios that allow investment performance and member salary growth to exceed and fall short of baseline assumptions.
The IFO published a new research brief that examines the impact of Act 105 of 2019, which allows certain SERS employers the option to pre-fund their unfunded liabilities. The analysis finds that the two participating employers effectively locked in roughly $1 billion of nominal savings over thirty years while all SERS employers are projected to save an additional $300 million (nominal). The savings are due to very strong returns realized on advance payments made in 2020 and 2021.