The dog is awfully close to catching the runaway car – the dog being the Legislature and the car being the Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly last week to move authority for increasing employer contribution rates from the PERS board to the Legislature. Should the House concur, well, how does the dog fare anytime it catches the car?

Legislators have long loved having the power to give out retirement benefits (retirees tend to vote). They set the benefit amount PERS participants accrue for each quarter year of eligible employment. They established the generous options for determining each participant’s “high four” – the four years used to calculate retirement pay. They created the 3% cost of living adjustment compounded annually that generates those ever-growing 13th checks.

In contrast, legislators have assiduously avoided taking responsibility for the payment of those benefits. Instead, they delegated limited authority to the PERS board. PERS gets to set and collect “contributions” from both employers and employees. PERS gets to invest those revenues to generate funds to pay for benefits. But PERS cannot reduce or change any benefits.

About two decades ago, legislators jacked up benefits without paying for them. PERS found itself with a gap between future benefits and projected revenues. This deficit began to grow rapidly.

After maximizing investment strategies and employee contributions (limited by federal rules), the PERS board turned to employer contributions to close the funding gap. Despite multiple employer rate increases, the deficit continued to surge. It has now passed $25 billion.

The PERS board, with no other option, voted to make a huge jump in the employer contribution rate – up 5% over three years to 22.4% of participants’ salaries.

Employers that have to generate their PERS contributions from local taxes bowed up. They demanded the Legislature stop the increase.

And that is what the Senate vote seeks to do by taking away power from the PERS board to increase rates. It does far more, though. It will make the Legislature solely responsible for funding PERS – now and in the future.

Since 2011 when the PERS Study Commission appointed by former Gov. Haley Barbour recommended that the Legislature make big changes, legislators (in cahoots with top state leaders) have done basically nothing to address the growing PERS deficit.

If the House approves the Senate’s bill, legislators will no longer be able to dodge tough PERS funding decisions. The Legislature will have jammed that runaway car into its own jaws and will have to run with it for decades to come.

Bow wow!

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.