JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Changes to the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) were revived in the Mississippi Senate on Tuesday, April 9.

Many of the asks from both retirees and Mississippi cities and towns live on through this measure.

The Senate passed an amended version of House Bill 1618. The Senate version would keep the PERS Board of Trustees as is with no changes.

The bill aims to shore up PERS while ensuring retirees their benefits won’t be touched. It would freeze the 2% employer contribution increase and task the Legislature with allocating the equivalent dollar amount. The bill also requires an additional two actuaries to provide input on investments.

“What we propose is to put two actuaries into the mix. Those actuaries will not be on the board, but will just provide some additional kind of financial and economic kind of input to the board to help make decisions on kind of the solvency of the system going forward. The Senate position is that the system needs some infusion of cash. There will not be anything changed in the PERS board, it will remain the same,” said State Senator David Parker (R-District 2).

Parker said he’s unsure just how much money the Senate will be looking to allocate into PERS. Another critical piece of this measure is that the bill specifically says that existing benefits will not be impacted.

“We’ve made promises to people who are active in the system right now. And a lot of them have chosen the profession they’re in based upon those promises. And I don’t think we could go back on those promises even if we wanted to. But I wanted to make sure in the language of this bill, that it is very, very clear that we are not going to change existing benefits or COLA benefits for any of our people in the system right now,” said Parker.

The bill now heads to the House where lawmakers can agree to these changes or invite conference.

We do not know how much the Senate will be allocating yet, but it’s expected to start at least $150 million.