This year’s virtual Town Halls with PERA executives will take place on Thursday, July 9.
PERA holds Town Halls each year after the release of the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report(ACFR), which contains details on the Plan’s finances and membership for the previous calendar year. The PERA Board of Trustees will release the 2025 ACFR at its June 25 meeting.
There will be two Town Halls on July 9—one for retirees and one for active members—and both will be virtual with the option to participate online, on the phone, or on social media. PERA executives will be taking questions live during both events.
The FDA has signed off on Colorado’s plan to start importing some prescription medications from Canada to save consumers money. The approval applies to 20 drugs that could be available in Colorado by next year, if Canada has enough supply to export them.
Defined benefit pensions may be harder to come by these days, but they’re still a major piece of the retirement income puzzle for many Americans. While many private-sector employees used to have access to a pension at work, such plans are largely only available to public employees today. That shift shows up in the data when you compare pension access by age group: More than half of workers age 65 or older have a pension compared to just 4% under the age of 24.
Social Security’s retirement trust fund is now expected to run out of money in 2032 if Congress doesn’t take action to shore up the system, according to the latest estimate from Social Security’s trustees. Medicare’s trust fund is in similar shape, facing depletion in 2033. Both programs could be forced to reduce benefits if they run out of money in their reserves.
Working with a professional such as a financial advisor can make a big difference when it comes to setting and achieving money goals. If you’re meeting with an advisor for the first time, some of the most helpful questions to ask don’t actually have anything to do with how to manage your money.
News You Should Know is a digest of news from publications around the nation about finance, investing, and retirement.
While the proposed conversion of Pinnacol Assurance from a quasi-public entity to a private one—and its potential financial implications for Colorado PERA—was the subject of discussions during the recently concluded legislative session, lawmakers did not move forward on the issue. Supporters of privatization had been pursuing a ballot measure on the topic, but that proposal is also off the table as stakeholders discuss other options for the workers’ compensation insurer.
The 2026 legislative session ended in mid-May after 120 days during which lawmakers introduced and debated hundreds of bills. Here are some over-arching themes from the session, from bipartisan work to the major task of passing a balanced budget.
The Federal Reserve has a new chair for the first time in nearly a decade. Kevin Warsh, who previously served as a governor on the Fed’s board, is replacing outgoing chair Jerome Powell. He takes over the central bank during a challenging period when inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target.
If you’re turning 65 soon, you’re approaching a major milestone in life that brings with it some important decisions that can affect your finances in retirement. Take this quiz to test your knowledge on topics like Medicare, Social Security, and longevity.
News You Should Know is a digest of news from publications around the nation about finance, investing, and retirement.
It’s no secret that Social Security is facing financial trouble in the near future; the program is expected to deplete its reserves in less than ten years, according to the latest estimates.
There have been many suggestions for improving Social Security’s finances, one of which would involve requiring all public employees to participate in Social Security. Some public-sector pension plans—like Colorado PERA—serve as a replacement for Social Security, so neither workers nor their employers contribute via payroll deductions.
However, such a shift in federal policy could have unintended negative consequences, according to a recently released report from the Coalition to Preserve Retirement Security (CPRS) and benefits consulting firm Segal. (The Colorado PERA Board of Trustees employs Segal as its actuarial consultant.)
Many states have been providing their public employees with retirement benefits longer than Social Security has been around. For example, the Colorado General Assembly created Colorado PERA in 1931, four years before the federal government established Social Security.
It wasn’t until 1950 that Social Security began accepting state and local government workers into the program. Colorado was among the states that stuck with its own plan to provide retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to the majority of its public workforce (some PERA members and members of other public pension plans may contribute to both a pension and Social Security).
Note: If you’re a PERA member who has earned a Social Security benefit from other employment, you’ll receive benefit payments from both PERA and Social Security in retirement. Learn more on the PERA and Social Security page.
According to the CPRS report, more than four million public employees across the country today are not covered by Social Security, and nearly 250,000 of them are in Colorado.
The impact of mandatory Social Security
The potential implications of requiring participation in Social Security can be difficult to predict, since each state or local government and plan is different and could take a different approach.
For states that would opt to preserve existing plans and also join Social Security, there could be significant added costs. Employees and employers both contribute 6.2 percent of payroll through Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes. Adding those contributions to existing payroll deductions for public employee retirement benefits would eat into workers’ paychecks and put financial strain on school districts, state and local governments, and other public employers.
The CPRS report estimates the cost of additional contributions nationwide to be somewhere between $45 billion and $60 billion in the first five years. In Colorado alone, mandatory Social Security could cost more than $2.5 billion, according to the report.
There’s also the potential impact on existing retirement plans to consider. Even if existing plans closed to new members to try to offset the added cost of FICA taxes, for example, the plans would still have to pay retirement benefits their members had earned. And without contributions coming in from working members and their employers, those plans would face additional risk and uncertainty.
In addition, public retirement plans are structured to attract and retain qualified public employees and may provide better benefits that Social Security, especially for workers in demanding and dangerous positions. For example, plans that cover first responders often allow members to retire earlier than plans that don’t. Forcing all employees into Social Security could remove this benefit and make it harder to hire and maintain a talented public workforce.
Requiring all public employees to participate in Social Security isn’t a sure bet when it comes to shoring up the program’s finances. While increasing the number of participants would increase the amount of money coming into the Social Security trust funds, those new members would also add liabilities—earned benefits—over time, leading to additional expenses for Social Security.
Improving the financial sustainability of the Social Security program is an important goal, and one that will likely require a great deal of discussion between legislators, government officials, and other stakeholders.
While requiring public employee participation may be a part of that conversation, it’s important to keep in mind the potential impacts on employees, employers, governments, and taxpayers who could face additional costs, uncertainty, and other risks.
