Free Republic

A price tag is now emerging for what last year's collapse of investment giant Lehman Brothers could cost the state of Florida: more than $1 billion. The losses could make Florida and its citizens among the biggest casualties in the biggest bankruptcy ever. -snip- The storied bank hired former Gov. Jeb Bush as a consultant in June 2007, five months after he left office. As governor, Bush also served as a trustee for the State Board of Administration, which invests public money. Lehman was the dominant Wall Street broker that sold the SBA $1.4 billion of risky, mortgage-related securities that...

In the four Michigan budgets approved by a Republican-controlled Legislature under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, revenues at the Dexter Community Schools have moved in line with many public school districts throughout the state: The Washtenaw County district gets more state dollars now than it did under Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s last budget in 2010-11, even though it now serves fewer students than four years ago. However, Dexter Community Schools Superintendent Chris Timmis says his district isn’t experiencing any real spending increase. Timmis calls the total of $1.8 million extra the district has collected from the state in those four years a...

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said Wednesday the answer to New Jersey's rising public employee pension debt lies in creating a trillion dollar federal loan program that will help states avoid insolvency, spare millions of government workers from economic devastation and take the pressure off state budgets. The government aid program — which Sweeney stressed would not be a bailout — would allow financially strapped New Jersey to shed its $50 billion unfunded liability and cut the state's required annual pension contribution in half.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is now taking on one-time Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner.On Monday, Trump fired off a tweet telling Rattner: "I think you should have gone to prison for what you did, I guess Obama saved you." He ended the tweet telling Rattner to watch: "I will win!" It was unclear what activity Trump was referring to that should have landed Rattner in jail. Trump did not respond to CNNMoney's request for comment. In 2010, Rattner did pay $10 million in fines when he settled with the New York state attorney general for his alleged involvement in a...

More bad news for Chicago (and Illinois) taxpayers arrived Friday morning in a 35-page, double-sided packet. On one of the last pages: "The entire Act is void." Cook County Circuit Court Judge Rita Novak tossed out Chicago's pension reform law. City Hall had negotiated the pension changes for municipal and labor employees with many of the city's unions on board. But Novak, using the Illinois Supreme Court's May pension opinion as her sword, ruled that the city's plan violates the Illinois Constitution: A public worker's pension is a contract that cannot be "diminished or impaired." lRelated Revenge of the pension...

Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues, 50% Of Their Cash That Will Have Go To Pensions. [ Full title ]. ... When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring debt, volatile equities and heavy-handed intervention; Japan with its stratospheric debt and science fictiony demographics; Greece, which needs no explanation; the developing countries with their weak currencies and mountain of dollar-denominated debt. And of course America’s triple bubble of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Underfunded...

Cook County Board today cleared the way for President Toni Preckwinkle's plan to raise the county's sales tax a penny on the dollar, mostly for pensions. The action came when the board's Finance Committee, which includes all board members, voted 9 to 7 to 1 to send the $474 million a year tax hike to the full board, which will consider it later today. The key votes came from Commissioner Luis Arroyo, a Chicago Democrat who voted "yes," and suburban Republican Elizabeth Gorman, who cast a "present" ballot and who is widely rumored to soon be headed to a new,...

Even as Mayor Rahm Emanuel warns about a property tax hike of up to $250 million for the cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools, another big wave of increases likely is coming to rescue the pensions of police officers and firefighters. A massive payment due to those retirement plans next year could drive up Chicago property taxes by more than 30 percent, according to a Crain's analysis. And if the current logjam in Springfield continues, it could be a lot worse. Taxes on a $250,000 home would jump $224, assuming the city continues its current practice of using property taxes to fund...

Ballot initiative threatens state worker retirement security A coalition of anti-union, anti-public employee groups, including the National Right to Work Committee, launched their latest attack against public employee pensions and the hard-earned retirement security of state workers. Their misleading campaign, called the “Voter Empowerment Act of 2016,” would undermine collective bargaining and require voter approval for changes to pensions and other retirement benefits, including medical insurance. “This dangerous initiative is a real threat to the financial security of our members and all public employees,” said Yvonne R. Walker, Local 1000 president. “It is more important than ever to become a...

The unfunded liability of the Michigan public school pension system increased from $25.8 billion to $26.5 billion from 2013 to 2014, according to an actuarial report released in May. The system's growing costs have been called a “budget killer” and are taking an increasing amount from the funding Michigan devotes to schools. The state has agreed in recent years to essentially pick up increases in the cost of the school pension system. These payments have risen from $155 million in 2012 to $796 million in 2015, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency. Democratic politicians and union representatives have claimed that...

Michigan’s closed state employee pension system got some good news this year: unfunded liabilities did not increase. But taxpayers are still on the hook for the $6.2 billion promised to retirees that the state has failed to save enough for. A new valuation shows the system’s liabilities grew roughly $500 million since the last report — but so did the value of assets set aside to cover those liabilities. The state carries $16.2 billion in pension liabilities, and $10.0 billion of investments. Some of the system’s previous assumptions have been updated to reflect actual experience, which added $400 million to...

The Teamsters have begun informing retirees and current workers that their pension benefits may soon be cut, the final ironic twist to a lobbying campaign that saw the union spend its own members' dollars to win the right to shrink their retirement pay. The somber notifications began going out from the Teamsters Central States Health and Welfare Pension Fund this spring, a decision that could ultimately affect 410,000 current pension participants and a total of more than 10 million U.S. workers nationwide. Cuts could begin as early as next year.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (AFP Photo/Christof Stache) Zagreb (AFP) - The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday urged Croatia to stop paying pensions to people who served in the country's World War II Nazi-allied armed forces, labelling the policy an insult to their victims. "In view of the horrendous war crimes committed in the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH)... such a policy is inherently mistaken," the centre's chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said in a letter to Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic. Paying pensions to members of the WWII Ustasha armed forces...

The oil and gas industry has been one of the better investments made by Michigan’s two largest government employee pension funds, according to a recent report by Sonecon LLC, a Washington D.C. economic advisory firm. The report examined the combined investment returns of Michigan's separate pension funds for school and state employees. Together, their investments in oil and natural gas companies gave a rate of return that was 37 percentage points higher than the return on all of their investments. Oil and gas investments outpaced investments in other industries by 43 percentage points. Due to chronic underfunding, both pension funds...

One of every four retired workers from the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools is getting a pension of more than $60,000 a year. That’s 80,365 people in all. For 13,240 of them, those checks provide a yearly income of $100,000 or more, a Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association analysis of pension records has found. An additional 20,004 have pension incomes totaling between $80,000 and $100,000 a year. ... the root of the problem is that government officials kept promising lifetime benefits to workers — and, in many cases, to their surviving spouses should they...

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state’s 2013 pension overhaul, unraveling an effort by lawmakers to rein in benefits for the consistently underfunded public-sector system. The current pension shortfall is estimated at $111 billion, one of the largest nationally. The high court affirmed a decision in November by a state circuit court that the legislative changes violated pension protections written into the state constitution. The decision is a victory for a consortium of public-sector unions while creating a huge challenge for new Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who already faces a yawning budget deficit for the coming fiscal year.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday struck down a 2013 law that sought to fix the nation's worst government-employee pension crisis, a ruling that forces the state to find another way to overcome a massive budget deficit. In a unanimous decision, the seven justices declared the law passed 18 months ago violates the state constitution because it would leave pension promises "diminished or impaired." The decree puts new Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly back at the starting line in trying to figure out how to wrestle down a $111 billion deficit in what's necessary...

Chicago has a simple financial choice: Stay in frying pan or get in the fire. That in simple terms is what Moody's Investors Service said in a report today about the difficult options the Emanuel administration faces over the city's woefully underfunded pension funds. The city must cut spending and raise taxes now or the risks of becoming insolvent will grow, forcing even harsher decisions later. The credit rating agency offers a sobering reminder of what's at stake in the eight-page report, which focuses on the pensions problems. ... A CUT ABOVE JUNK. Moody's, typically the most conservative of the...

The Chicago Public Schools — already facing a federal criminal investigation of its CEO and a projected $1.1 billion budget deficit next school year — now must pay a price for those problems through higher interest rates on a new $300 million bond deal. The rates lured investors to buy the bonds, which CPS says it will use to pay off recently completed construction projects. But they also mean Chicago taxpayers will pay more over the life of the borrowing deal, financial analysts said Wednesday. The main bond issue — for $280 million to be repaid over 25 years —...

CARSON CITY — A state lawmaker pushing for major changes to the state public employee retirement plan told a committee Wednesday that long-term workers would do better under his proposal than with the current defined-benefit pension plan. Assemblyman Randy Kirner, R-Reno, testified in support of his Assembly Bill 190 in front of the Ways and Means Committee. The bill would establish a new hybrid retirement plan for public employees hired as of July 1, 2016. The bill is fiercely opposed by public employee groups who argue the existing Public Employees Retirement System plan is well-managed and does not need to...