Posted on 12/14/2016 8:01:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the city’s emergency-financial team said that high levels of retirement debt could prevent them from rescuing the Motor City’s finances. Detroit had been in economic decline for decades, and the pension problem—including billions of dollars in bonuses handed out while the city was hurtling toward insolvency—was just one part of the depressing financial picture.
Dallas, by contrast, has been one of the fastest-growing American cities in recent years. Becoming a magnet for investment and opportunity, however, hasn’t protected the Texas city from experiencing its own Detroit-style financial crisis.
Dallas’s retirement system for cops and firefighters combines many of the features that have nearly sunk state and local pension plans around the country. Things got so dire over the summer that retirees began pulling their money out of the system. It’s the first run on a government pension plan in recent memory.
Dallas created the police and fire plan in 1916. The system’s trustees eventually persuaded the state legislature to allow employees and pensioners to run the plan. Not surprisingly, the members have done so for their own benefit and sent the tab for unfunded promises—now estimated at perhaps $5 billion—to taxpayers.
Among the features of the system is an annual, 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment that far exceeds the actual increase in inflation since 1989, when it was instituted. A Dallas employee with a $2,000 monthly pension in 1989 would receive $3,900 today if the system’s annual increases were pegged to the consumer price index. Under the generous Dallas formula, however, that same monthly pension could be worth more than $5,000. No wonder the ship is sinking. The system also features a lavish deferment option that lets employees collect pensions even as they continue to work and earn a salary.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org:8080 ...
Same mindset with both cities.
City of Dallas proper isn’t “Dallas” the metropolitan area.
The City may even be Dem. Anyone know offhand?
“The City may even be Dem. Anyone know offhand?”
The article states that the city is controlled by Dems, although many of the lavish retirement perks were approved by the Republican controlled legislature.
The uniparty strikes again.
There’s no easy or painless solution. The only thing is to allow it to collapse and pick up the pieces and start over, it seems to me.
Plenty of blame to go around but one thing is for sure: the people most responsible for this will suffer the least.
It’s easy to hand out other people’s money.
Dallas is chock full of liberals.
Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio are the BLUE cities of Texas. Thank God they don’t have enough people to overcome the votes of the rest of Texas.
Let’s say that you invent a machine that freezes time in one area.
You can rob a bank, and freeze time there so no one finds out until after you die.
That’s how Democrats operate.
They steal because nobody will do anything about it until after they are dead.
Good analogy.
They should jail the politicias who set this up.
If you set up a pension in your business the way the government does, you would actually go to jail for it.
They take money from you for your pension, but instead of putting it onto a bank account for the future they spend it now- then promise to pay you out of the money that comes in when you retire.
It’s been blue for a minute. As has Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.
In 2014 and 2015 the fund lost $370 million on investing activities with a loss of $238 million in 2015 alone. Benefits paid to members for those two years totaled $533 million. The fund hired its first Chief Investment Officer in mid 2015. That individual left after one year and the position remains vacant.
At this rate the future looks bleak. It reminds me of what former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Jim Hightower once said about family farms: It’s still possible to make a small fortune in family farming provided you start out with a large fortune.
Let them eat cake.
4% annual raises in pension plus a COL? That is what I read and it is absurd. Not enough money anywhere to fund that.
Just as bad as the feral gubment budget process.
To hell with them. Let them struggle like those of us in the private self-dunded retirement world.
This is yet another leveling of the playing field I can hope that Trump can chop down to size.
Correlated article, dated 12/13/16 :
99 Dallas officers have quit or retired in last 10 weeks, reports say"
www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/dallas/article120589238.html
" CBS 11 reported that most of the 99 who left since Oct. 1 were some of Dallas’ most experienced officers,
according to the incoming president of the Dallas Police Association."
I pulled the numbers from the 5 counties I consider to be the Dallas ‘Metroplex’
DJT
200,395 - Collin
28,396 - Rockwall
261,865 - Dallas
345,683 - Tarrant
169,175 - Denton
Total = 1,005,514
HRC
139,837 - Collin
9,633 - Rockwall
458,845 - Dallas
288,001 - Tarrant
110,000 - Denton
Total = 1,006,316
Difference = 802 HRC
RECOUNT IT..! LoL
Hahahaha. These public “workers” crapped in their nest. Their inappropriate benefit raises were from their greed and sappy politicians agreeing. Tough luck.
Dallas is as Dem as Austin.
Pension funds should never be run for the profit of those that control them.
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