TEXPERS' Board of Directors elected a new president during its annual conference, held May 23-26 in Austin, Texas.

Jim Smith, chairman of the San Antonio Fire & Police Pension Fund, is the newly elected president of the board.

An interview with Smith, pictured left, next to TEXPERS Executive Director Art Alfaro, will run in the next quarterly publication of the association's membership magazine coming to mailboxes in July.

Texas' 87th Legislature ended May 31, ending a hectic session impacted by a pandemic and a winter freeze in February that left millions of people without power.

TEXPERS' Legislative Committee, chaired by Paul Brown, tracked 99 bills that were directly related to public employee pensions or had an indirect relationship in regards to management of public organizations or impacts on benefits of public servants at the state and local levels.

TEXPERS has a downloadable document listing the bills and their final results here.

A recap of how the public employee pension industry was impacted by the session will be published in TEXPERS' upcoming membership magazine, which prints later this month and is mailed to the mailboxes of our membership in early July.

In the meantime, here are several curated articles to get a general view of how the legislative session went:

TEXPERS staff and members of its board of directors frequently monitor sites of national news media, pension industry organizations, state and US political figures, research institutions, and of our investment/money management experts. Listed below are links to various headlines we think you should know about.

TEXPERS' quarterly publication Pension Observer offers its Advisor, Associate, Consultant, Actuarial, and Vendor members advertising packages to help them get the word out about their organizations. Click here to access the association's 2021 Rate Sheet.