This NY Times article reveals a scam that New York AG (“attorney general” or “aspiring governor,” take your pick) Eliot Spitzer won’t touch with a ten-foot pole:
Every year since 1999, New York City has reported that it has all the money it needs to pay for the pensions that have been promised to city workers.
With the retirement plans said to be financially sound, state politicians have happily showered city employees with generous pension enhancements ó annual cost-of-living increases, holiday bonus payments, early retirement with full benefits ó that are the envy of private-sector workers, whose pension benefits have eroded.
But a close inspection of city pension records shows that the funds committed to the plans may fall well short of the cityís promises to hundreds of thousands of current and retired workers. They look fully funded chiefly because the city has been using an unusual pension calculation that does not comply with accepted government accounting rules. Even the cityís chief actuary, who helps produce the annual reports, says the official numbers are ìmeaninglessî when it comes to showing the plansí financial health.
The chief actuary, Robert C. North, has prepared a little-noticed set of alternative calculations showing that the gap in the pension funds could be as wide as $49 billion. That is nearly the size of the cityís entire annual budget and the equivalent of the cityís publicly disclosed outstanding debt.[ . . .]
