Locally-Administered Pension Plans: 2007-2011

1983

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2011

are research associates at the CRR.

Issues in Brief, 2016

Most analyses of public pensions focus on states and cities. Less has been written about the role of counties, which are significant public service providers in some states. This brief sheds light on pension activity at the county level by documenting the costs, funded status, and unfunded liabilities to determine whether counties should regularly be included in analyses of state and local pensions. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section describes the nature and role of counties in the state government structure. The second section takes a closer look at states where counties administer their own pension plans as opposed to participating in state-administered plans, with a special emphasis on Maryland, Virginia, and California. The third section focuses on pension expense as a percentage of revenues for counties and compares this ratio to that of states and cities. The fourth section reports the funded status of pension plans administered by counties and reports count...

2016

Beginning in 2015, under new provisions of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the unfunded actuarial accrued liability for public pension plans moved from the footnotes of financial statements to the balance sheets of employers. In ad­dition, localities that participate in “cost-sharing” state plans are now required to report their share of that plan’s unfunded liability on their books. This brief explores the implication of this latter shift. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first sec­tion describes the new GASB provisions. The second section illustrates, in detail, our method for applying GASB 68. The third section presents the estimated impact of GASB 68 on the 92 cities in our sample that are participating in cost-sharing state plans, as well as the overall impact on our full sample of 173 cities. The fourth section compares individual results for se­lected cities. The final section concludes that forcing cities to recognize their share of the state’s unf...

2010

2008

Public Budgeting & Finance, 2017

Policymakers face significant liabilities with traditional defined benefit (DB) plans in the government. Unlike defined contribution (DC) plans, the fiscal risks under DB plans are borne by the plan sponsors, that is, state and local governments, and ultimately taxpayers. The Great Recession heightened pension solvency concerns in many jurisdictions, necessitating a reconsideration of their retirement systems. Drawing on Florida municipalities' plans from 2006 to 2012, we develop an index of pension change and track its evolution. Findings reveal a preponderance of incremental change and suggest the lack of significant change may be a function of high financial costs and status quo bias.

2003

Stories in the popular press suggest – particularly in the wake of the bankruptcy of Detroit – that pensions are the major expense of American cities and will lead to their widespread collapse.1 Thus, it is important to know the burden of pensions on cities. This burden can be measured in two ways. The first is the direct cost of pensions to city governments. These costs include contributions to locally-administered plans, contributions to state non-teacher plans, and contributions to state teacher plans on behalf of dependent school districts. The direct cost measures the pressure on the city’s finances. But there is also a broader question: how much do residents of a city pay for pensions? Here one would add to the city’s direct costs the contributions made by independent school districts that serve city residents and contributions that city residents make to county plans. This second concept – which is more comprehensive, avoids distortions created by local government arrangement...

2008