More green for public workers’ golden years

The legislative session has ended with two welcome pieces of good news for Hawaii’s Employees’ Retirement System.

One is that Senate Bill 936 increases the employer contribution rate to 24 percent of employee pay. That’s up from 17 percent currently — and that will bring further help paying down the state’s unfunded liability there.

And the state pension fund hit its highest investment return since 2014 — up 4.6 percent. It also beat its own policy benchmark rate of 4.1 percent and the median public fund return of 4.4 percent. Nice to be ahead of the pack in this game.