In March 1972, following nearly four years of effort and with a grant from the Ford Foundation, ICMA secured official approval from the Internal Revenue Service to establish a deferred compensation program that would provide a retirement savings option for its members. On May 26, 2012, the ICMA Retirement Corporation (ICMA-RC) celebrated four decades of providing portable retirement saving benefits for public sector employees.

The seeds of ICMA-RC were sown in the late 1960s, when what was then the International City Management Association, under the direction of Mark E. Keane, set out to address the lack of retirement plan vestment opportunities available for professional local government managers. Keane had been challenged to take on the mantle of providing a portable public sector retirement benefits plan by Perry Cookingham, former city manager of Kansas City, Missouri, and a longtime ICMA member. According to Keane, Cookingham had been let go by the Kansas City council after 19 years “without a nickel in retirement benefits.”

“Many managers just never [were] able to vest in any retirement system, let alone build a continuous retirement reserve over a career of 20 years or more,” said William E. Besuden, then ICMA assistant director. 

Executive Director Keane, the ICMA staff, and the members of the ICMA Insurance-Retirement Committee (which included Chairman Robert Van Deusen, Ross M. L. Amyx, Wayne F. Anderson, Douglas Ayres, Gerald R. Bouchard, and past members Virgil A. Basgall, James L. Galloway, E. F. Klement, Edward H. Pothoff, and Harris Stevens) worked diligently between 1968 and 1972 to turn the dream of a portable deferred compensation retirement plan for public sector employees into reality. Shortly after the program was incorporated, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, became the first public sector entity to sign on as an ICMA-RC plan sponsor.

ICMA-RC currently serves more than one million public sector participant accounts and is among the 25 largest record keepers in the United States, according to a 2011 PLANSPONSOR magazine recordkeeping survey. Today, ICMA-RC services nearly 9,000 retirement plans and has one of the highest retention rates of any retirement plan provider.

ICMA is delighted to join ICMA-RC as it celebrates four decades of successfully helping build the retirement security of local government employees.  To learn more about this historic achievement, visit the ICMA-RC 40th anniversary website.