In early 2009, we released a full-length report on the status and characteristics of public pension plans in Pennsylvania’s ten largest cities (ranked by population). Later that year, the state enacted Act 44, which made some reforms to municipal pension plans and gave distress scores to municipal pension plans based on the funded ratio (assets/liabilities).
Three years of distress scores have been handed out by the Public Employee Retirement Commission since then, with cities mostly staying in the same level of distress, with notable exceptions.
- Pittsburgh, which was ranked as “severely distressed” in 2010 when its funded ratio was 34%, climbed to the ranks of “moderately distressed” in 2012 and stayed there in 2014 (62%, then 58%).
- Scranton has remained “severely distressed” in all three rankings, but its funded ratio has fallen from 47% to 23%.
- Allentown and Reading have both fallen 11 percentage points from where they stood in 2010 (and Allentown has fallen from “minimally distressed” to “moderately distressed”).
