04/04/2011 - Even though some government pension plans across the country are still struggling, Arkansas' two major pension funds are showing signs of improvement after suffering millions of dollars in investment losses in 2008 and 2009.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System reported market value assets of $9.884 billion, which was up $1.037 billion from the prior year. But it was still off from the high-water mark of $11.6 billion on June 30, 2007, before the start of the Great Recession.

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Missouri also made some changes to its pension system in 2010, including, for the first time, requiring employees to contribute to their retirement system and increasing the retirement age to 67, said Kil Huh, director of research at the Pew Center on the States.

Those changes are expected to save Missouri more than $600 million during the next 10 years, he said. But that won't solve Missouri's problem: It had an unfunded liability of $9 billion as of 2008, according to the Pew Center on the States report.