Pac-Man, Tapeworm…Blob?

The biggest city in PA has big municipal pension problems.  Allegheny Institute readers know that.  As far back as 2009 we published a report on the health of big city pensions, and Philadelphia was in bad shape then.  Philadelphia accounted for 83% of the total unfunded liabilities of the ten biggest cities in Pennsylvania (put Philly and Pittsburgh together and that was 95% of the total).  Two years ago we updated big city pension health in the distress score methodology established by Act 44.  The distress score is assigned to a municipality on the aggregate pension health of its plans, and Philadelphia was in moderate distress but slipped to severe distress in 2014.

So how to move forward and restore health?  That is the question, isn’t it?  The former Governor proposed some fixes for the two statewide systems, describing their consumption of available dollars (and perhaps teaching a bit about opportunity costs) as a Pac-Man.

Now consider what a newspaper editorial had to say about the City of Philadelphia’s situation:

Outside of better investment returns or asking taxpayers for even more, city workers will have to be a major source of additional funds. They will have to understand that although it is grossly unfair to ask them to pay for promises that irresponsible politicians made but couldn’t keep, stabilizing the fund benefits workers as well as taxpayers. Changes to future benefits also have to be considered.

How the paper describes it?  As a Blob, referring to the 1958 flick filmed in the Philly burbs.