By Jeff Wentworth
Guest Commentary 

These days many retirees may be identifying with the old country-western song that declared, “Sure could use a little good news today.”

Well, the good news is that for both current and retired teachers as well as state employees, your pension funds are intact.

And that is good news not only for teachers and state employees. It is good news for other Texans when teachers and state employees spend their money at local businesses.

A total of more than two million Texans are either retirees or contributing members to the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) or the Employee Retirement System (ERS).

TRS provides retirement, death and disability benefits to more than one million Texas public education employees and annuitants.

In 2007, these payments totaled approximately $5.8 billion, of which 95 percent stayed in the state, going to Texas residents and paying state and local taxes. These TRS pension benefits generated $493 million in annual state fiscal revenues and $103 million in local government revenue last year.

TRS and ERS funds should continue to remain sound in spite of the current economic situation, because each is a defined benefit plan. These plans are intentionally designed to weather market conditions.

A defined benefit plan portfolio is highly diversified. It is invested for the long term so it will withstand market fluctuations.

If you are a retired member of ERS, for example, your monthly retirement benefit cannot and will not change as a result of a short-term investment loss. The accounts of contributing members of ERS are not affected by the financial market.

It does not impact the amount of guaranteed interest a retirement account earns each year, currently 5percent. The state legislature establishes the interest rate.

Some retired teachers have expressed concern about TRS's strategic partnership with now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers. These funds – about one percent of the total TRS portfolio – are in the control of TRS. They are neither held by Lehman Brothers nor commingled with Lehman Brothers funds.

All of TRS's investment assets totaled $104.9 billion as of Aug. 31 of this year. The fund was down only 4.3 percent. By comparison, the market overall was down double or even triple digits.

TRS ended the previous year at $112 billion, making it the ninth largest pension plan in the United States' private and public sectors. It is the seventh largest in the public sector.

The ERS Trust Fund has $21 billion to pay promised benefits. Its long-term performance has exceeded expectations.

More about each system's benefit plan may be found on each of their respective Web sites: www.ers.state.tx.us and www.trs.state.tx.us. The ERS Web site also offers brochures that are helpful in understanding market volatility and defined benefit plans.

While state employees and teachers' salaries sometimes do not compare favorably with the private sector, at times such as these there are definite benefits to having retired from the public sector.

Texas State Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) represents District 25, which includes part of Bexar County. He can be reached via e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .