Billionaires attempt to remake Montana’s pension system

Among the many questions facing the Montana Legislature earlier this year was how to fix the state’s two biggest public pension plans, which had taken a beating during the Great Recession. Lawmakers eventually found a way to stabilize the plans without radically restructuring them, but a new report by the Institute for America’s Future, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., shows how outsiders attempted to capitalize on the situation by pushing pension privatization in the state.

The report, titled "The Plot Against Pensions," claims that Montana’s pensions were targeted by a variety of billionaire-backed advocacy groups with links to Charles and David Koch and John Arnold. These groups are waging a state-by-state campaign, from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island to Arizona, in the hope that public pensions can be fundamentally remade.

Specifically, the groups aimed to replace Montana’s defined benefit system–a crown jewel of the labor movement–with at least a partially privatized system, and eliminate guaranteed income for future public employees.

by Jimmy Tobias

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