One of Iowa Governor Terry Branstad’s former budget directors says she hopes Iowa lawmakers tackle pension reform soon.
That’s Gretchen Tegeler, who served as Branstad’s budget director in the 1990s. She is now president of the Taxpayers Association of Central Iowa. Branstad has indicated he wants Tegeler to be part of a review of public worker pensions.
While some public worker pension systems in other states are teetering toward insolvency, Iowa’s system was recently ranked as the 10th best positioned pension system in the country. There are four main systems for public worker pensions in Iowa, but by far the largest is the Iowa Public Employees Retirement System, commonly called IPERS. It covers more than 325-thousand current, former and retired employees of the state, counties, cities and school districts.
