Tag: Florida

Florida Filters Public COVID Data While Virus Takes a Toll

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/now/Florida-Filters-Public-COVID-Data-While-Virus-Takes-a-Toll.html

Excerpt:

Most of the public isn’t worried about people testing negative for COVID-19, but for researchers that data is an essential tool to understanding the path of the virus as it courses through Florida, killing more than 30,000 and infecting more than 1.9 million people.

“They’re definitely not releasing everything,” Hladish said last week. “It has a huge impact on scientists’ ability to understand what’s going on.”

The Herald/ Times interviewed more than two dozen researchers, journalists and legislators about their experience with open records in the last year and the common conclusion was: Florida health officials are reluctant to release new data related to COVID-19 that contradicts the governor’s upbeat narrative and they frequently withhold information until they are either threatened with a lawsuit, or convinced the trend lines have improved. (See: Timeline of Florida’s Dark Year for Sunshine.)

Author(s): MARY ELLEN KLAS, THE MIAMI HERALD

Publication Date: 1 March 2021

Publication Site: Governing

As Wall Street Migrates to Florida, Hedge-Funders Move to Offload Manhattan Homes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-moves-to-florida-nyc-real-estate-11614020268

Excerpt:

Real-estate veterans and hedge-fund executives believe a seismic shift is under way, one that is moving vast amounts of Wall Street wealth from New York to South Florida. For the past several years, Wall Street has been colonizing the Sunshine State, attracted to more favorable tax policies and sunnier climes. And the momentum is only accelerating amid the pandemic.

….

While prices are under pressure in New York amid an oversupply of high-end condominiums on the market, price tags in Palm Beach and Miami appear to be on an unstoppable upward trajectory.

Last week, private-equity executive Scott Shleifer, a co-founder of Tiger Global Management, paid over $120 million for an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, setting a price record for the state. New Jersey hedge-fund executive David Tepper is also in contract to buy a $73 million house on the ocean nearby, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While he maintains a $238 million home in New York and another luxury condo in Chicago, Citadel founder Ken Griffin has also been on an acquisition spree in South Florida, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy land in Palm Beach and Miami, and is opening an office in Miami.

Author(s): Katherine Clarke, Cara Lombardo

Publication Date: 22 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Senate bill would end Florida’s state pension option for new employees

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/02/05/senate-bill-would-end-floridas-state-pension-option-for-new-employees/

Excerpt:

After years of discussions about the tricky issue of overhauling Florida’s retirement system for government employees, a Senate committee this week approved a proposal that would shut future workers out of a traditional pension plan.

The proposal, sponsored by Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Chairman Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, would require new employees as of July 1, 2022, to enroll in a 401(k)-style “investment” plan. Employees currently are allowed to choose whether to take part in the pension plan or the investment plan.

Rodrigues, whose Republican-controlled committee approved the bill (SB 84) in a party-line vote, said lawmakers have to make “difficult decisions” to maintain the long-term solvency of the pension fund. He pointed, in part, to a $36 billion unfunded actuarial liability, which is essentially a measurement of whether the fund is projected to have enough money to meet its future obligations.

Author(s): Jim Saunders

Publication Date: 5 February 2021

Publication Site: Tampa Bay Times

Public Pension Roundup: Reform And Regression

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2021/02/19/public-pension-roundup-reform-and–regression/

Excerpt:

Now, generally speaking, when an employer switches from a traditional pension to a defined contribution plan, this means a significant drop in plan benefits for employees. In Florida, that’s not the case — at least nominally not so: the employer contribution rate is the same for either type of plan, and varies only by employment class. (Of course, this doesn’t take into account any additional contributions needed to remedy funded status.) In addition, regular readers will know that I insist whenever the opportunity arises that state and local employees should participate in Social Security just as much as the rest of us do; as it happens, that is already the case for public employees in Florida. In addition, unlike the 8 year vesting of the traditional pension plan, the employer contributions to the defined contribution plan vest after only a year of service.

Author(s): Elizabeth Bauer

Publication Date: 19 February 2021

Publication Site: Forbes

Florida consumers ‘flabbergasted’ as property insurers push for double-digit rate hikes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-insurance-florida-idUSKBN2AC111?utm_source=34553&utm_medium=partner

Excerpt:

Florida property insurers are jacking up rates by double-digit percentages, blaming the hikes on lingering damage from past hurricanes, a wave of litigation, and a law that encourages lawyers to sue by allowing courts to award them big fees.

The rate increases in Florida, the third-largest property insurance market among U.S. states, are the highest in memory, according to some insurance agents and residents. One danger, they say, is that the new rates could make owning a home in Florida unaffordable.

Author(s): Suzanne Barlyn

Publication Date: 12 February 2021

Publication Site: Reuters

To Plug a Pension Gap, This City Rented Its Streets. To Itself.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/business/dealbook/pension-borrowing-retirement.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

That hasn’t deterred governments. Nationwide, cities and states issued $6.1 billion in pension obligation bonds in 2020, more than in any year since 2008, according to data compiled by Municipal Market Analytics, a research firm. States with significant new pension borrowings last year included Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Texas. In California, cities borrowed more than $3.7 billion to squirrel away at various public pension funds, breaking the old state record of $3.5 billion, set in 1994.

It’s a major comeback for this type of debt, said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics who has been writing about the deals for years. “They’re borrowing money and basically putting it into the market and gambling,” he said.

Mr. Fabian said his firm’s tally almost certainly missed the borrowing by municipalities that took West Covina’s approach, because those bonds used different names. Flagstaff rented its City Hall, libraries and fire stations last year to back a pension deal marketed as “certificates of participation.” In January, Tucson did the same, leasing two police helicopters, a zoo conservation center, five golf courses and the bleachers at its rodeo grounds, among other things. And a Chicago suburb, Berwyn, used “conveyed tax securitization bonds” to help fund police pensions.

Author(s): Mary Williams Walsh

Publication Date: 16 February 2021

Publication Site: New York Times

Testimony: Status of the Florida Retirement System

Mary Pat Campbell
Testimony: Status of the Florida Retirement System

Excerpt:

Using publicly available data and annual financial reports published by FRS, our quantitative team has built an actuarial model of the FRS system that has allowed our analysts to spotlight areas of systemic risk and inefficiencies that have resulted in not only the FRS defined benefit plan going from 118 percent funded and a surplus of $13.5 billion to 82 percent funded and holding over $36 billion in earned, yet unfunded, pension obligations that are implicitly protected by law, but also how the defined contribution Investment Plan, as currently built today, falls well short in providing adequate retirement security to public sector employees.

Regarding the current state of the FRS pension plan, underperforming investment returns have been the largest contributor to the unfunded liability, adding $17 billion in debt since 2008. Milliman Inc.—the actuaries hired by the system—warned for three straight years (2016, 2017, and 2018) that the system’s assumed rate of return was not reasonable, leading to its eventual reduction to 7.0 percent. Even with the reduced assumption, however, our analysis indicates that FRS still has a less than 40 percent probability of achieving or exceeding that rate over the next ten years. Market outcomes below FRS expectations will still likely be an issue generating unexpected costs for taxpayers, and the unfunded liabilities that exist today will continue to inhibit plan assets from compounding over decades, making paying down the $36 billion debt and honoring the state’s long-term obligations more di­fficult.

Author(s): Vittorio Nastasi

Publication Date: 4 February 2021

Publication Site: Reason

Mortality with Meep: Excess Mortality in California, Texas, and Florida by Race/Ethnicity

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/mortality-with-meep-excess-mortality-8e2

Excerpt:

For Hispanics, it’s two thirds, with most of it coming from California (23%), then Texas (21%), then Florida (10%). New York City accounts for 9%, and then the rest of New York state for 3%.

UPDATE: Checking out the Hispanic population by state, these percentages are a little in line with national distribution — California (26% of U.S. Hispanic population), Texas (19%), Florida (9%), New York (including NYC — 6%). The most disproportionate effect comes from New York City.

Graph:

Author: Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 31 January 2021

Publication Site: STUMP