Retirement insights from a Colorado PERA perspective

News You Should Know

The POTI Year in Review

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As we look back at the articles that most captured your attention this year on PERA on the Issues (POTI), we noticed a few trends: you like keeping informed about proposed legislation – especially as it relates to Social Security’s Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) – and you also enjoy a broad perspective on the Retirement Landscape in our regular Retirement Roundup (a digest of timely information and insight about finance, investing, and retirement). Here are some highlights from 2016:

Top Topics

The most-visited category in 2016 was Legislation, where readers were kept updated on what was going on with proposed legislation, both in Colorado and nationally.

The most clicked newsletter story of the year was a legislative update on the WEP: UPDATE: Congressional Hearing Announced on Equal Treatment of Social Security.

And since we started tracking search results this year, 2016 Colorado Ballot Issues was the number one term that landed visitors on the PERA on the Issues web page. (Editor’s choice for favorite search query: is wep repeal ever gonna pass its been long time.)

Most Engaging

We encourage you to share your thoughts on our articles, especially on our all-time (119 and counting) most-commented on article: Proposed Federal Legislation Could Eliminate Windfall Elimination Provision, which also ranks as the most visited page both for the year and since PERA on the Issues launched.

The article from this year that caught your attention with the most comments had to do with a summary of proposed legislation affecting Colorado PERA in 2016 Proposed Legislation Status. We will be sure to provide you with similar updates in 2017.

Looking Forward

We conducted a Reader Survey in 2016, and you told us you wanted more coverage of legislation and politics, health care, and retirement security. In response to the survey, we launched a Health Care category to keep you apprised of trends in health care (including PERACare). We also provided readers with in-depth information on how PERA  works, including features on PERA’s funded status, portability, and many other innovations unique to PERA.

Is there an issue you would like for us to explore in 2017? If so, please leave your suggestion in the comments below. Thank you for using PERA on the Issues as a resource and we look forward to continuing to bring you information and insight on topics related to providing retirement security for over 500,000 of Colorado’s public employees.

Windfall elimination provisionA provision of federal law that may reduce Social Security benefit payments to retirees who receive a pension based on work during which they did not contribute to Social Security. The WEP does not apply to those with 30 or more years of substantial earnings in Social Security.PortabilityThe ability to take an existing retirement plan with you when you change employers.

Comments

  1. Billy Thornton says:

    WEP favorable change is VERY important!

  2. Sandy Connally says:

    Thank you for your continued efforts on WEP. Most of us have worked outside jobs and have enough social security credits to augment our PERA retirement benefits. As a retired teacher, this would allow me to eat quality foods, rather than the stuff that fills your stomach, but jeopardiszes health.

  3. Sandy Spahn says:

    What has happened to the proposed legislation for equal treatment of PERA retirees regarding social security benefits? A friend told me none of the Colorado legislature representatives voted for HR 711. Why are they not coming out in favor of this proposed equalizing legislation?

    Thanks for any information you can share.

    Sincerely, Sandy Spahn

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