, Columnist
How to Low-Ball a $4.4 Trillion Pension Hole
The public pension problem is even worse than it looks
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Last week's report that Philadelphia borrowed $50 million to open its schools on time was another chapter in the tale of the city's industrial decline, middle-class flight, population loss and racial segregation. What was interesting, though, was this line in a New York Times article, reporting that the school district has a projected deficit of $304 million:
There are a couple of components to this. Although the changes adopted last year don't require disclosure until 2014, the rulemaking body that governs government accounting missed a chance to lift some of the fog on the sublimely opaque matter of pension accounting, by failing to require pension funds to say just how much of a future deficit they might be facing.