Today's Brief discussed ways for Pittsburgh's Mayoral candidates to tackle the huge legacy cost issue (pensions, debt, workers' comp, and retiree health care) facing the City. As we have mentioned the Act 47 Recovery Plan for the City is being updated and there are now some documents beginning to see the light of day.

Here are some of the more interesting quotes from the Act 47 team in some of those documents:

"The City's pension problem has gone from very bad to worse...[and is] less than halfway toward what is considered the warning level (60 percent funding)"

"There are no easy solutions to the City's legacy funding crisis...changes [like ending retiree health care for new employees and getting current employees to contribute to health care costs] must be extended into the future in order to keep the legacy crisis from becoming worse"

"Addressing a liability in excess of $1.3 billion...mandates the development of new sources of revenue. These could include: additional taxes..."

"Significant new assistance from the Commonwealth or the Federal government is unlikely"

Scary stuff indeed. Consider too that in the 2009 budget ($437.9 million) nearly half is assigned to debt service ($92 million) and benefits ($122 million). All that adds up to some serious deliberations over what the City does and can afford in the way of municipal services and for its employees in the coming years.