POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Weekend Public Pensions and Public Finance Roundup 26March2011

It has been quite the week for me. So we've got a bit of backup on the pensions stories.

And like the family members that have been puking around here (yes, that's part of the "quite a week"), it's time to puke up these stories!

SOCIAL SECURITY

Possible Dem crack-up over whether entitlements need to be addressed in the short term? This should be interesting.

Charles Blahous notes that Reid's attitude of waiting for catastrophe means an almost-sure destruction of Social Security as it is currently understood.

Which I expect is going to happen anyway due to demographic reasons, but hey.

Speaking of being blind to demographic issues, someone at Daily Kos whining about Mark Warner being okay with raising the Social Security normal retirement age.

GENERAL PUBLIC PENSIONS AND UNIONS

You know who get pretty sweet pensions? Congresscritters. Must be nice to be able to vote for your own raises and retirement benefits. It's not even your money! And you can even enjoy it after the jerks throw you out of office! Whee!

Coverage of the same from leftie site firedoglake -- and you know what? They're right.

Congress shouldn't get pensions at all.

That make you happy, FDL?

The Great Recession exposed the true cost of public employee benefits.

Wikipension is a wiki on public pensions run by NASRA. So, you know, caveat lector.

John Bury asks if those who are pointing out the unfundedness and unsustainability of public pensions are really attacking public employees, or if the people who are puffing on pipe dreams that things are okay are the ones undermining the stability of these pensions (oooh, NASRA is on his list). Hmmm. Related: what's 15% of $0?

For the nth time, looking at the impact of the discount rate on the valuation of public pension liabilities. And the WSJ about the tension between the actuaries who say "Hey, guys, you might need to lower that rate" and the people who would rather not have to put up more money for the promises they're making.

Meredith Whitney walked back her prediction of mass muni bond defaults, and Charles Gasparino gets his panties into a bunch. More on munis.

CALIFORNIA

Basic Q&A on Calstrs, the teachers pension plan in California.

Reaction to the Calpers asset-side corruption continues with proposed gifting rules.

Want a good horror story? How about a San Fran retirement benefit study? Sorry if you have trouble sleeping after that.

Reminder: Calpers decided it didn't need to change anything about its asset return assumption. More on same, also noting that Calstrs is using the same assumption... which it had shaved down from 8%.

Someone in California is on board with my idea of no pensions for pols. Oh, that "someone" is an Assemblyman? Awesome.

Other GOP pension reform proposals in California (with notes on where Gov. Jerry Brown disagrees/agrees....) And more on the GOP filing.

California municipalities don't have a fun time ahead of them, pension cost-wise. Of course, one easy way to deal with it (some of it) is just firing people.

Trying to use pension issues to political gain, for both Dems and Repubs.

Political low-hanging fruit: capping pension benefits. Other low-hanging fruit -- cutting pensions of felons.

The Progressive point of view on California pensions -- not surprising at all.

San Diego talks on pensions not going too well... actually, not going at all.

COLORADO

Denver City Councilmembers think it's a great time for a raise!

FLORIDA

Raising retirement ages for Florida employees. And for Florida employees to contribute more to their pensions.

Part of the pensions battle is the ginning up of class warfare... but not bankers v the "little guy" - but who the big $$ pensioners are. Here's a slice looking at 4 particular people in Manatee County. More on those 6-figure pensions.

The theme of high valuation rates comes up again and again. This one specific for Florida. Thing is, even with these high assumptions, many funds are still in deep trouble.

ILLINOIS

Understatement of the year: Illinois pension crisis eludes easy solutions. Easy to explain -- they've already tried all the easy solutions. They've come up dry. Actually paying for what benefits cost when you bestow them upon employees never seems to have occurred to anybody.

Cook County board president says public employees are going to have to share in financial sacrifices. Good luck with that.

A collection of links to arguments as to whether the pension benefits of current employees can be altered under the current Illinois constitution.

State teachers fund doing really, really poorly. That's one to watch - it's going to get really ugly.

MARYLAND

Maryland workers weren't happy with the governor's proposed pension plan.

Maryland House adjusted governor's proposed plan.

MASSACHUSETTS

People really are stuck on that special $100K pension mark, aren't they?

MICHIGAN

Not a purely pension thing, but it is related. Michigan schools are seeing existence-destroying deficits in front of them. Some population flight (at least some incredible ones from Detroit), as noted in the 2010 Census numbers, may be related.

Here's the deal -- some of the reasonableness of methods of funding and valuing public pensions counts on governments not going out of business... and having a limitless power to tax. That's called into question when you remember that people can leave, in a variety of ways (including the way we all leave -- death. That's why I keep coming back to demographics.)

You can only tax people. A bit difficult to tax the abandoned buildings, when no humans are involved.

But they're trying this pension tax thing. So that will drive away the few people left (who are left only because they can't sell their houses). No, they're not happy about it.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Pension reform to include higher employee contributions in NH.

NEW JERSEY

Back to John Bury on trying to explain the state of NJ pensions.

NEW MEXICO

Legislation to make minimum retirement age for NM employees the scary high level of....55.

OHIO

Cincinnati city council not having much fun wrangling with pension issues.

A good explanation of the deal with having different amortization horizons.

RHODE ISLAND

Trying to yank pensions from crooked officials. Good luck with that, when said crooked pols vote on their own benefits. I prefer my idea of no pensions for pols at all.

Trying to let retired RI employees to return to work. Yeah, double-dipping is so popular elsewhere. I'm sure this will be popular in RI, too.

VIRGINIA

The public employees don't have to be unionized to cause financial difficulties for a state.

CANADA

Crooked pol resigns, keeps his pension. Ain't that the way.

Quebec tries its hand at pension reform.

EUROPE

Noting that one of the PIIGS has its own test of public finances. I doubt this will play out better in Portugal than it has in Greece.

It's already been getting ugly in England.

UK university staff strike over pension reforms.

OECD report on needing to raise retirement ages.