Saturday, November 29, 2008

Pension panic in Lexington?

Speculation has run rampant in Lexington since a pension reform task force meeting was abruptly cancelled earlier this week.

Chronic underfunding in the city's public employee pension plan now necessitates a contribution from city coffers to the plans of 46% of salary.

Not good.

Cities around the country are facing bankruptcy after years of the same kind of neglect.

1 comment:

Hempy said...

Kentuckians vote Republican. That's the price paid for voting Republican.

Republican (conservative) economic philosophy wreaks havoc on working and middle class, and agriculture workers.

Should anyone be surprised?

The federal government may be forced into buying up private sector (starting with the auto industry) pensions and healthcare benefits, and administer them through Social Security.

Some years ago, the Railroad Retirement system was either bought up or turned over the the Social Security administration. The result was that if you took your Railroad Retirement benefits, you couldn't also get Social Security. The Railroad Retirement benefits were better than Social Security.

Presumably, the same thing might happen again, but happening to all businesses as well as state and local retirement plans. It'd be interesting to see how state legislators and other officials would react to that if their pension and healthcare benefits were similarly transferred to the Social Security administration, with healthcare benefits being administered by Medicare.