Posted on 10/19/2017 9:36:34 AM PDT by matt04
Moody’s Investor Service issued a dire warning to lenders Thursday: Hartford will likely default on its debt by November and, if the city does not change course, will run up annual deficits exceeding $60 million through the next twenty years.
On Sept. 26, Moody’s downgraded the city’s bond rating to Caa3 from Caa1, reflecting the investor service’s belief that “in the likely event of a default, bondholder recovery will be 65%-80% of principal,” it stated Thursday.
Moody’s projects the city’s operating deficits will reach $60 million to $80 million per year through 2036, largely driven by fixed costs, which command 23 percent of Hartford’s 2018 budget, according to a Moody’s analysis. Those fixed costs include pension contributions, benefits, insurance and debt service.
“Revenues are not keeping up with the growth of these expenditures,” Moody’s warned, “and highlight the need for concessions from three primary stakeholders — bondholders, the state and labor unions — to achieve financial sustainability.”
Moody’s called Hartford’s unions “a constraint” to trimming the city’s deficit. “Contractual salary increases and employee benefits are significant contributors to the city's long term structural imbalance,” the report read. Unions would have to make “significant concessions” for Hartford to narrow those deficits, it said.
High labor costs stem from “decades of contractual salary increases and employee benefits,” Moody’s wrote, and those benefits — which include health insurance, pensions payments and workers compensation, among others — are expected to increase by $21 million in 2018. Moody’s found that benefits and insurance costs have increased 6 percent each year for the last 10 years, compared to an annual increase of just 2 percent in the urban consumer price index during the same period.
Moody’s suggested the General Assembly craft legislation that would open up the arbitration process and allow municipalities to renegotiate contracts.
(Excerpt) Read more at courant.com ...
Thanks. Can’t have a thread without mentioning the NFL.
This one will be complete when someone brings up Jesus.
Check out the median age and income compared to the rest of the state:
http://www.city-data.com/city/Hartford-Connecticut.html
Very young (lots of children), very poor.
What could possibly go wrong?
Also click on the dark purple to find out where the rich liberals live....(west of the city) :-)
Really the only thing that separates CA from the rest of the failed states you cite, is that we have a functioning economy. Failing that, CA is just like NJ, IL and a few others. But even CA’s good economy won’t, in the end, be enough to save it from the fate of the other mega-blue states, because we have a populace that’s even more dependent on the nanny state, coupled with PE unions bent on being rich at taxpayers expense.
I would love to hire more cops but not until they revamp the entire pension system to make it more in line with normal private industry...
as it is, the cops and firemen can retire quite early with fat pensions and excellent health care..
they need to go strictly to 401ks and have cops fully engaged in their retirements...
same with all federal/state/county employees and military....
I can see the need for earllier retirement for police and fire personnel compared to a office worker as their jobs require much more physicial stamina, however that fact needs to be accounted for in the way retirement is handled. I.e. Controbutions comparable to private sector, adjusted for the number of years they will serve.
We had a functioning economy in NJ as well - then we taxed it to the point where it left for greener pastures. CA faces the same danger; businesses and their employees are being forced to foot the bills for a rapidly expanding class of people that will contribute NOTHING. Here in NJ the straw that is breaking the camel’s back is public school funding; years ago the makers’ children filled schools, now the makers often are childless and funding the education of takers’ children.
“..now the makers often are childless and funding the education of takers’ children.”
They are childless because they don’t have the money to support them and probably don’t even have the time to “make” them.
“...as it is, the cops and firemen can retire quite early with fat pensions and excellent health care..”
I knew a fellow here in NorCal who retired out of the NYPD with a good pension, moved out here, took another “government service” job with the USPS, and managed to “retire” from there as well.
“This one will be complete when someone brings up Jesus.”
It’s Heysooos! You didn’t spell it correctly!
Possibly; while I’m married with children I certainly don’t think it is for everyone. There are plenty of reasons not to do either of them; people just have to understand the consequences of those decisions. They are used as justification for our country to leave the borders unguarded (the whole country is a sanctuary now, to replace the lost generations), and those people (in my experience) pay a lot of income taxes because they lose some deductions.
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