Free Republic

Rahm Emanuel raised taxes to get city worker pension funds on a ‘path to solvency.’ The shortfall still ballooned by $7 billion. ... A record-high property tax increase. A new tax on water and sewer service. A higher 911 emergency fee on telephone lines... Emanuel’s series of tax hikes was painful, but he promised the extra money was part of a plan to get the woefully underfunded city worker pension funds on a “path to solvency.”.. in the four years since .. The pension funds are actually worse off. When Emanuel pushed through the tax hikes, the city worker retirement...

Illinois ranked No. 48 in an analysis of the state’s ability to pay all of its bills, including public employers’ pension benefits, according to a new ranking of the states’ fiscal health by Truth in Accounting (TIA). Illinois was found to be short $216.1 billion to pay its bills ... The amount of the state’s shortfall in funding to pay off its bills amounts to $50,800 per taxpayer

Public employees in California may have their pension benefits slashed due to the rollback of a longstanding rule in the state, Gov. Jerry Brown revealed in a recent budget briefing. The California governor revealed that he has a “hunch” legal proceedings could pave the way for cuts to public employees’ benefits. “There is more flexibility than there is currently assumed by those who discuss the California rule,” Brown said during the briefing.

In its struggles to deliver balanced state budgets over the past 10 years, Colorado has amassed $3.7 billion in obligations that it may never pay. That sum includes severance taxes taken from municipalities, funds collected for such state services as tourism promotion and waste tire cleanup that were never delivered, prison and school bus costs that were never paid for, and other accounting tricks. State budget analysts told the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee in November that the 2011-2012 budget, with an anticipated $1.1 billion shortfall, no longer includes the $3.7 billion cut over the years. The amounts were included in...

Illinois Constitution raises questions about who's on the hook if they become insolvent. With some city pension funding levels dropping below 40 percent, a question arises that seemed unthinkable just a decade ago: If a pension fund runs out of money, who pays for the retirement security promised to city workers? The answer is complicated by changes to the Illinois Constitution in 1970 that made retirement benefits for public employees a contractual guarantee that could not be diminished. Union leaders say pension benefits are guaranteed not only for retired workers but for those still working, and that if a fund...