Chris Gray, executive director of the Missouri Council of the Blind, said state officials told him that “property tax values are not increasing; they are decreasing because of foreclosures, because of the soft property market, because property is falling in price, and that there truly isn’t enough money in the fund to pay each pension recipient their share for the whole year.”

Gray said “the peculiar thing” about the pensions is that they are calculated based on property tax collections two years earlier. Indeed, in a seeming contradiction, the blind got a $7-a-month increase in their pensions in July, based on growth in property tax collections in the 2013 budget year.

Such annual increases have been the norm over the years since the state’s assessed valuation usually rises because of construction and higher property values. That has boosted the blind pension from a maximum of $489 a month in 2005 to the top benefit of $718 today.

But since 2008, the statewide assessed valuation of property has teetered up and down. Thus, collections for the pension fund have dipped or generally remained flat. That has required the fund to rely on its fund balance.