Blood on the table, money in the bank

摘要

IN HIS inaugural address last year Kasim Reed, Atlanta's mayor, promised to fix "a pension system that is strangling our city." Around one in every five of Atlanta's general-fund dollars goes towards pension costs, which have grown from $55111 in 2001 to $nom in the current fiscal year and were forecast to reach $16om by 2015. Twice during the past decade the city council boosted retirement benefits without figuring out how to pay for them; in early 2010 pension plans for the city's police, firefighters and general employees were only about 53% funded. Consequently, the unfunded part of the city's pension liability has grown from $321m in 2001 to $1.5 billion today. And a bearish market could drive the sum to $4.5 billion by 2020-a large figure by any reckoning, particularly for a city that has just approved a budget for next fiscal year of $547m.