Old news made new again

The Louisville Courier Journal is catching up to the Bluegrass Policy Blog on the state public employee benefits disaster story. Sort of.

In today's paper, an article about state pensions starts like this:

"The funding shortfall facing the public employee and teacher retirement systems has grown by roughly $3 billion in the past year, according to recently released annual reports."

"The funding gap plaguing the Kentucky Retirement Systems and Kentucky Teachers' Retirement System is now nearly $30 billion combined."

The problem is with the words "in the past year" because the annual report quoted in the story only divulges data up to June 30, 2008. That's before the stock market and mortgage bonds crashed.

The problem is even worse now.

Instead of believing their own negative spin about the Bluegrass Institute, the CJ reporters should have been quoting the Bluegrass Policy Blog from two weeks ago.