Editor’s note: Montana Watchdog was provided with new information and updated this Feb. 1 story on Feb. 10. The first version said the top employer contribution was $484,029 for someone who retired from the Billings School District. That has been updated to  show the actual top employer contribution was $398,431 for a person who retired from Montana State University - Billings.
By PHIL DRAKE
HELENA – The Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) on Wednesday released state retiree pension information to the Montana Policy Institute, providing employer contribution data for more than 8,800 retirees in the TRS system.
An initial review shows that five of the top 10 pension contributions are for former University of Montana employees. Those state contributions ranged from $267,708 to $325,569. The top was a total $398,431 for an employee who served 46 1/2 years and retired from Montana State University - Billings.

On the low end, the employer contribution was $1,592 for a person who worked 6.59 years in Scobey schools.
This represents about $534 million in total employer contributions. David Senn, executive director of TRS, said the table shows a total of 227,811 years of credible service, which averages to $2,345 in employer contributions for each year of service.
MPI plans to make the data available to the public soon.
“We will go through the data and make sure we present the information in a fair and accurate way,” said Carl Graham, MPI chief executive officer. He said he expected the information to be accessible to the public in about 30 days.
In 2010, Montana Watchdog, which is published by MPI, made the initial request for the information to the Montana Public Employee Retirement Administration (MPERA) and the TRS.  Attorney General Steve Bullock ruled in favor of making the information public. TRS, PERA, and MPI subsequently worked together to provide data that complies with taxpayers’ right to public information while respecting privacy rights of retirees, with MPI paying the costs of reprogramming state computers to create the custom reports.  The information, when posted, will include retiree names, the state or local entity they last worked for, years of service and the amount the employer paid into the system over their career.
The information provided will not be the full pension the employee receives, but only the employer’s contribution, which, according to TRS officials, is a combination of contributions from the state general fund and a larger share from the actual employer—in most cases a school district, drawing on property taxes. It was a decision reached after discussions between Roxanne Minnehan, executive director of the MPERA, Senn and MPI.
 However, the TRS and MPERA boards gave both their staffs permission to ask a District Court to rule on state Bullock’s opinion if necessary.
Montana Policy Institute is awaiting the information from MPERA.
TRS officials said the information is an estimate of the total employer contributions made to Montana Teachers’ Retirement System to help fund retirement benefits for Montana’s public educators. They also note that some members work for different employers during the careers. So it is not possible to know what portion of the contributions were made by the employer listed with the information.
According to TRS: “While TRS believes the estimate is close to the amounts contributed by the member’s employer prior to retirement, in a small number of cases the amount shown may be more or less than the actual contributions received by the System.  Because employer contributions are a product of the individual’s salary, the amount contributed by the employer for two members with exactly the same number of years of service can be significantly different.”