PERSI reports recovery, requests software upgrade funding and staff positions

The Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI) told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the pension fund posted continued recovery from recent market corrections and seeks funding for ongoing software upgrades and staffing to expand member services.

Frances Lippert, a budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, reviewed PERSI’s structure, funding and recent appropriations. Lippert said PERSI administers defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans, oversees the unused sick leave fund, and is managed by a five-member retirement board. She said PERSI had 81 authorized full-time positions across multiple offices and has averaged about 89% of those filled. PERSI expended $11.4 million from appropriated funds in FY2024, with personnel costs accounting for 56.6% of that total and operating costs driven in part by an ongoing multi-year pension software upgrade.

Director Mike Hampton told the committee the fund returned about 9% in the most recent year and that the plan holds approximately $22.0 billion in assets with about 185,000 members. Hampton said Idaho’s single, statewide public pension system covers a broad set of public employers and that the system’s funded ratio was about 87% at the end of the last fiscal year.

PERSI requested two ongoing enhancements totaling $277,100, including $25,000 to create a dedicated travel budget for board-member conference travel and a 5% request for general inflation. On the one-time side, PERSI requested $3.0 million for year four of its pension software upgrade, $7,000 for office furniture and $628,500 for IT hardware recommended by OITS. Lippert said the governor recommended these enhancements excluding the inflationary increase and office furniture.

Committee members asked whether investment management fees are included in the administrative appropriation; Hampton said investment management fees are paid from continuously appropriated funds and do not go through the annual appropriation. Members also discussed the statutory process for post-retirement cost-of-living adjustments; Hampton said the board recommends adjustments it judges prudent to preserve the long-term sustainability of the fund and that the automatic 1% statutory adjustment applies when CPI-U exceeds that threshold, with board recommendations layered on top as appropriate.

No formal votes were taken during the hearing; the presentation concluded with the director highlighting operational statistics including more than 66,000 phone calls handled by staff, 44,000 completed workflows and over 37,000 registrations to a new member portal launched in January.