Gov. talks about employee pension fund

WTNH TV

Updated: Jan 23, 2012 6:32 PM

Hartford, Conn. (WTNH) — Bucking some bad news from Wall Street Governor Malloy says he is going to rapidly accelerate contributions to the state employee pension fund.

Malloy says the chronic underfunding by the Rowland and Rell administrations has got to stop, and that making bigger payments now will save taxpayers billions over the next two decades.

The State Employee Pension Fund currently only has enough money in it to cover about 45 percent of its obligations to thousands of retired and future retired state employees.

The Governor says this is not in reaction to the downgrading of the state's bond rating by the Moody's investment service last week. Instead, he says this is prudent, like starting 401k contributions when you're 20 instead of 55.

Surrounded by charts that showed the cost savings, late Monday afternoon the Governor said that by making a $125 million increased contribution to the state pension fund this year, and in future years, he would actually be saving taxpayers billions in the decades ahead.

"We need to be fiscally strong, we need to repair the damage that has been done by successive administrations in this state," Malloy said. "It is no honor to have the worst funded pension program in the country."

Malloy continued on to say, "What I actually aspire to is getting to an 80 percent funding as rapidly as we can and the fact that we can do that and save the taxpayers $6 billion is pretty important."

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