BATON ROUGE — This fall, voters will decide on 10 different amendments to change Louisiana's constitution, one of which impacts how excess money will pay off debt within the state's retirement system.

On Nov. 3, voters will encounter Amendment Five, which reads as follows:

"Do you support an amendment to authorize a state retirement system to apply any nonrecurring state monies it receives to any of its unfunded accrued liability rather than requiring application to its oldest unfunded accrued liability?"

This amendment impacts the state's retirement systems, which state employees, school employees, teachers and state troopers pay into in order to get benefits and pensions after they retire.

The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, or PAR, shared that there is a gap in funding between the amount of money employees put in through contributions and how much the systems have to pay in future benefits. That gap is the unfunded accrued liability, PAR said, which is the state's retirement debt. PAR said that debt currently exceeds $13 billion.

"You have to think of it as lots of little debts, rather than one big one," PAR President Steven Procopio said.

Right now, the state's constitution requires 25% of any state budget surplus to go to the retirement system to pay off its debt, starting with the oldest debt.

If voters approve, this amendment would allow the Louisiana legislature or the retirement system to choose which debts to pay off first; in other words, which order debts should receive surplus funds.

"If you're going to be paying it off longer, that means you're paying more interest. Not necessarily at a higher rate, but that means more years you're paying interest, so you can actually save more money if you pay off a debt that's going to be around longer," Procopio said.

A "no" vote would keep the current rules in place, where retirement debts would be paid off oldest to newest.

Click here for more coverage on the ten Fall constitutional amendments.