Public Pensions in Washington

Unlike many other states, the governance and administration of Washington’s public pensions is shared among several entities:

• The Department of Retirement Systems collects and accounts for contributions, verifies data reported by employers, maintains records, communicates pension information and pays retirement benefits.
• The Legislature enacts retirement plan policy, including funding policy, and establishes contribution rates.
• The Select Committee on Pension Policy studies pension issues and recommends any retirement plan changes to the Legislature. Committee members represent active and retired members of the retirement systems, as well as state legislators.
• The Office of the State Actuary is staff support for the Select Committee on Pension Policy and performs regular valuations of the retirement plans, determining overall health and funding status, and recommends employer/state and member contribution rates to the Pension Funding Council.
• The Law Enforcement Officers’ and Fire Fighters’ (LEOFF) Plan 2 Retirement Board adopts actuarial standards, provides for additional benefits as allowed by law and establishes contribution rates for LEOFF Plan 2.
• The Pension Funding Council evaluates and adopts pension funding assumptions and recommended contribution rates.
• The Washington State Investment Board serves as pension fund trustee and invests and accounts for the trust fund dollars.

Most of Washington’s public pension plans are designed to be prefunded, which means they accumulate the assets needed to pay a member’s retirement benefits during the member’s working years. The Judges’ Retirement Fund and the Judicial Retirement System (both closed to new membership) are funded on a pay-as-you-go basis, which uses current receipts to pay current benefits.

Both public employers and their employees contribute to the retirement plans. The amounts they contribute are calculated as a percentage of the employee’s pay. In a few plans, those percentages are set in statute, but for most, the Legislature can adjust the rates, as needed. The Washington State Investment Board collectively invests the contributions and the earnings on those investments help to fund the plans.

The Office of the State Actuary (OSA) performs a valuation of the retirement plans every other year, studying the experience of each and analyzing the effects of anticipated economic and demographic changes. In the valuation, OSA determines how much money must be contributed annually to pay for the benefits members are expected to earn during their public service.

OSA’s recommendations then go to the Pension Funding Council, which is responsible for evaluating and adopting employee and employer contribution rates (subject to review by the Legislature). There is one exception — rates for the Law Enforcement Officers’ and Fire Fighters’ (LEOFF) Plan 2 are evaluated and adopted by the LEOFF Plan 2 Retirement Board.

A plan with assets that equal its liabilities is termed fully funded, which means the value of the assets on hand equals the plan’s accrued liabilities. Any gap between the benefits earned and a retirement plan’s assets is referred to as an unfunded liability. A plan with unfunded liability is considered underfunded.

Washington state has fully funded and underfunded state retirement plans. Current state funding policy requires additional contributions to return the underfunded plans to a fully funded status. As a result of that commitment, it is expected all Washington state retirement plans will have adequate assets to provide for all earned benefits into the future. 

For more in-depth information on pension funding, including the funded status of systems/plans and projected benefit payments, visit the Office of the State Actuary (OSA) website.

In the 1930s and 1940s, retirement systems were created for the state’s public employees, teachers, judges, law enforcement officers and fire fighters. Each was independently administered until 1976, when the Legislature created the Department of Retirement Systems (DRS) to serve as the administrator of the public retirement systems. In 1996, DRS also took on the role of administering the state’s Deferred Compensation Program (DCP).

Significant events in DRS history are listed below:

Abbreviation definitions can be found in the glossary.

1930s-1940s 
PERS, TRS, WSPRS, JRF and many local police and fire fighters’ retirement systems are created.

1970 
Local police and fire fighters’ retirement systems are consolidated into LEOFF.

1976 
The Department of Retirement Systems is created to administer state retirement systems.

The Office of the State Actuary is created to provide pension cost estimates.

1977 
LEOFF, PERS and TRS Plans 2 are created.

LEOFF, PERS and TRS Plans 1 are closed to new members.

1981 
The Washington State Investment Board is created to manage the investment of all state trust funds.

1987 
The Joint Committee on Pension Policy is established.

1995 
TRS Plan 3 is created (with an effective date of July 1, 1996).

1996 
DCP is transferred to DRS.

DRS assumes accounting and reporting responsibility for JRA.

1998 
SERS Plans 2 and 3 are created (with an effective date of Sept. 1, 2000).

The Pension Funding Council is created to adopt pension funding assumptions and recommend employer/employee contribution rates.

1999 
PERS Plan 3 is created (with effective dates of March 1, 2002, for state and higher education employees and Sept. 1, 2002, for local government employees).

2001 
WSPRS Plan 2 is created (with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2003).

2002 
Voters approve Initiative 790, establishing the LEOFF Plan 2 Retirement Board (with an effective date of July 1, 2003).

The Joint Committee on Pension Policy becomes the Select Committee on Pension Policy.

2004 
PSERS is created (with an effective date of July 1, 2006).