Kentucky now carries a dubious distinction: home to the worst-funded U.S. pension in at least 14 years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Kentucky officials on Thursday presented the dire financials of its large state-employee fund. It has just $2.4 billion in assets to cover $12.4 billion in future liabilities for the year ended June 30. The Kentucky Employees Retirement System plan, covering the benefits of around 120,000 state workers, has a funding ratio — the basic measure of assets against liabilities — of just 19 percent. A decade of Kentucky lawmakers short-changing on pension contributions, plus investing losses from the most recent financial crisis, have pummeled a state-employees plan that was close to fully funded in the early 2000s. In the prior year, the Kentucky fund only had 23.9 percent of assets needed to cover future liabilities — making it the then-second lowest ever recorded by the Public Plans Database.
