Tag: Truth in Accounting

Citizens must be accurately informed for government to work

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/sheila-weinberg-citizens-must-be-accurately-informed-for-government-to-work/article_5d93e9cf-73c5-54c9-b762-133f91a94824.html

Excerpt:

An example of questionable disclosure practices is found in the Illinois budgeting and financial reporting process, specifically regarding pension contributions. In 1994, then-Gov. Jim Edgar led an effort to pass a bipartisan bill to solve the state’s $15 billion pension deficit. The plan would resolve the deficit within 50 years. The plan was structured to pay down the debt very slowly in the first 15 years and accelerate at the end. This ensured that sitting politicians in the early days of the plan would not be required to make the necessary tax increases or budget cuts to pay down the debt in a meaningful way.

This program is shown in charts to look like a skateboard ramp, appropriately named the “Edgar Ramp.” The problem is, the plan doesn’t work.

It is so unsuccessful that the Illinois pension deficit has grown from $15 billion to $317 billion as of June 30, 2020, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The state’s latest bond offering document emphasizes, “The state’s contributions to the retirement systems, while in conformity with state law, have been less than the contributions necessary to fully fund the retirement systems as calculated by the actuaries of the retirement systems.”

The latest Illinois Annual Comprehensive Financial Report discloses cash-flow problems, significantly underfunded pension obligations, other post-retirement benefit deficits and multiple references to debt-obligation bonds.

Author(s): Shiela Weinberg

Publication Date: 7 Aug 2022

Publication Site: News Gazette

What is the State of Pensions in 2022?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/what-is-the-state-of-pensions-in-2022

Excerpt:

State retirement systems in America are still Fragile. 

….

Despite state and local plans reporting disappointing preliminary investment returns averaging -10.4% in 2022 , there has been a net positive funded ratio trend on net over the past three years. 

Funded status in 2022 for state and local retirement systems has declined considerably from last year, the sharpest single-year decline since the Great Recession and financial crisis. Investment return volatility is contributing to some significant swings in funded levels, which has been compounded by rising inflation and geopolitical turmoil. 

Author(s): Anthony Randazzo, Jonathan Moody

Publication Date: 26 July 2022

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

CHICAGO’S $43,100 DEBT PER TAXPAYER DRIVEN BY PENSION DEBT

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicagos-43100-debt-per-taxpayer-driven-by-pension-debt/

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Excerpt:

Chicago once again earned a failing grade from Truth in Accounting in their latest Financial State of the Citiesreport thanks to over $38 billion in debt – $43,100 for each taxpayer.

Every Chicagoan would have to send the city that amount just for Chicago to pay the bills it owes. Chicago has just $9.9 billion available to pay $48.6 billion in bills. The Windy City came in 74th out of 75 cities studied in the report, only besting New York City’s massive $204 billion debt with a per-taxpayer burden of $71,400.

The city’s financial failings stem from pension promises the city cannot afford to keep. “Chicago’s financial problems stem mostly from unfunded retirement obligations that have accumulated over the years. The city had set aside only 23 cents for every dollar of promised pension benefits and no money for promised retiree health care benefits,” the report notes.

Author(s):Justin Carlson

Publication Date: 8 Feb 2022

Publication Site: Illinois Policy Institute

Report: Most big cities were in bad fiscal shape before the pandemic. Expect it to get worse

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.ocregister.com/2021/02/01/report-most-big-cities-were-in-bad-fiscal-shape-before-the-pandemic-expect-it-to-get-worse/

Excerpt:

In the group’s fifth annual report card on the nation’s 75 biggest cities, Irvine retains its title as the fiscally healthiest city in America — even while the vast majority of its brethren, both in California and across the nation, sink more deeply in debt thanks to promises they’ve made for pensions and retiree health care that are far more expensive than they ever expected.

Joining Irvine in the black was Stockton — testament to the restorative power of municipal bankruptcy — and the city of Fresno.

In the red in California, from least-in-debt to most-in-debt, were Long Beach, Chula Vista, Bakersfield, Riverside, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Ana, Anaheim, San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland.

All told, total debt for the 75 most populous cities exceeded $333.5 billion at the end of the 2019 fiscal year. Most of that was pension debt — $180.1 billion — while the rest was for retiree health benefits, at $160.1 billion.

Author(s): Teri Sforza

Publication Date: 1 Feb 2022

Publication Site: Orange County Register

New Jersey Taxpayers ‘On the Hook’ for Massive Debt: Report

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-jersey-taxpayers-on-the-hook-for-massive-debt-report_4139948.html

Excerpt:

New Jersey has amassed a huge, and possibly dangerous, level of debt, according to a new report that reviews the financial health of state governments across the country.

Each Garden State taxpayer owes tens of thousands of dollars and the state is a tax “sinkhole,” according to the nonprofit organization Truth in Accounting (TIA), because state lawmakers of both parties have overspent and used accounting “gimmicks” for decades. The organization defines “sinkholes” as states that lack the necessary funds to pay their bills.

….

The S&P report also gives New Jersey a low grade on debt practices.

“On our scale of ‘1.0’ to ‘4.0’, where ‘1.0’ is the strongest score and ‘4.0’ the weakest, we have assigned a composite score of ‘3.7’ to New Jersey’s debt and liability profile,” according to S&P.

Moody’s, in its July 14 report, gave New Jersey an A3 rating on its general obligation (GO) bonds, a low rating. But it praised recent efforts by  Murphy to solve the problems of long-term debt.

….

Fitch Ratings, in its April 13 report, gives New Jersey an A- grade. It said its rating reflects New Jersey’s “adequate financial resilience.” But it also said that its condition isn’t as good as that of most states, and stirs up some troublesome ghosts.

Author(s): Gregory Bresiger

Publication Date: 8 Dec 2021

Publication Site: Epoch Times

Financial Transparency Score 2021

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-transparency-score-2021

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Excerpt:

To encourage the publication of transparent and accurate government financial information, Truth in Accounting has created a transparency score for financial reporting by the states. This report focuses on important-but-obscure annual financial reports on file in statehouses across the country and measures their contents against widely accepted best practices from the private sector. This report is based on fiscal year (FY) 2020, which includes the onset of the pandemic and the most recent reports available for all 50 states. 

The Financial Transparency Score Report measures the states on an easily understandable 0-100 scoring scale, with a perfect score of 100 signifying an ideal timely, truthful, and transparent performance. While no state earned a perfect score in this year’s analysis, TIA regards a score of 80 or above as noteworthy.

Full report link: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/Financial-Transparency-Score-2021.pdf

Publication Date: 16 Nov 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

Look out for Zombie States – not only on Halloween

Mary Pat Campbell
Link:https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/look-out-for-zombie-states-not-only-on-halloween

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Excerpt:

We call it the “Zombie Index” based on the work of Edward Kane, a prolific and respected finance professor at Boston College. Back in 1985 and 1989, Ed wrote two books warning about taxpayer exposure to losses from bank deposit insurance schemes, before we knew what hit us in the savings and loan crisis. Ed coined the term “zombie bank” to identify effectively-insolvent banks that were allowed to remain open by regulators and others. Deceptive accounting principles greased the wheels for regulatory forbearance, making “zombies” appear to be solvent. 

Zombies had incentives, in Ed’s terms, to “gamble for resurrection.” Insiders could capture the upside of riskier investments, while prospective losses could be socialized through the government’s sponsorship (and ultimately, bailout) of deposit insurance systems. These incentives ended up magnifying taxpayer losses during the 1980s deposit insurance crisis. Those losses ran in the hundreds of billions of dollars and helped set the stage for the massive financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Author(s): Bill Bergman

Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

Illinois and Iowa – the Mutt and Jeff of ‘balanced budgets’

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/illinois-and-iowa-the-mutt-and-jeff-of-balanced-budgets

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Excerpt:

Iowa (the blue line) maintained positive net revenue in 15 of the 16 years. Illinois, on the other hand, did so in only three of those 16 years.

The frequency of truly-balanced-budgets, as indicated by “Net Revenue,” provides significant explanatory power (in econometrics-speak) for two important measures of state government performance – Truth in Accounting’s “Taxpayer Burden” measure of overall financial condition and rankings of the states on the latest Gallup results for a survey of trust in state government. 

In our latest (2021) Financial State of the States report on state government finances, Iowa ranked 9th, while Illinois ranked 48th. And in the latest Gallup poll on trust in state government, Iowa ranked 8th, while Illinois ranked 50th (dead last).

Author(s): Bill Bergman

Publication Date: 28 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

Financial State of the States 2021

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-state-of-the-states-2021

Full PDF: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/FSOS-Booklet-2021.pdf

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Excerpt:

Unfunded retirement liabilities
are the largest contributing factor
to the $1.5 trillion in state-level
debt. One of the ways states make
their budgets look balanced is
by shortchanging public pension
and OPEB funds. This practice
has resulted in a $926.3 billion
shortfall in pension funds and a
$638.7 billion shortfall in OPEB
funds

Author(s): Truth in Accounting

Publication Date: September 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting

Revisualizing the Financial State of the States: 2021 edition

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/revisualizing-the-financial-state

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Excerpt:

One large benefit of a tile grid map is you can see the geographically small states, which are often more obscured when you a geographically accurate map.

When viewed in this way, with the states colored by their grades, you can see that there’s a Northeastern Rogue’s Gallery, in addition to the expected stinkers of Illinois, Kentucky, and California (also, Hawaii, but many people don’t expect that one.)

But I want to point out that a lot of “red” states, in the political sense, also have crappy finances.

Texas is a particularly bad offender here, with a taxpayer deficit of -$13,100 per taxpayer. It’s not just the “expected” states where pensions are grossly underfunded — mind you, pretty much every single taxpayer sinkhole here has grossly underfunded state-level pensions — but it is a widespread problem.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 29 Sept 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

National Public Pension Coalition vs. Truth in Accounting: Who is Accurate With Public Pension Unfunded Debt?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/national-public-pension-coalition

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Excerpt:

NPPC, I recommend you think through what will actually inform and protect your members. The TIA folks are not distorting the message, except to the extent that state and local governments are undervaluing their pension and OPEB promises.

Complaining about TIA will not make the pensions better-funded. Complaining about TIA will not prevent the worst-funded pensions from running out of assets, which will not be supportable as pay-as-you-go, as the asset death spiral before that will show that the cash flows were unaffordable for the local tax base.

And don’t look to the federal government to save your hash. So far bailout amounts have been puny compared to the size of the promises.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 9 June 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

‘Full funding’ for pensions – two ways to skin a cat

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/full-funding-for-pensions-two-ways-to-skin-a-cat#new_tab

Excerpt:

Spending plans that “fully fund” pension obligations by making statutorily required contributions — amounts required by legislators, by law — do not necessarily fully fund pensions. In fact, Illinois has a sad history of passing laws with funding that falls far short of actuarial requirements — the amounts necessary to keep pension (and related retirement health care) debt from rising over time.

For an example, take a peek at the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS). Their annual report for 2020 is available here. The table on pdf page 2 shows that the system has accumulated more than $50 billion in invested assets, but this massive amount actually falls far short of the nearly $140 billion in present value obligation for future pension payments, leading to a nearly $90 billion unfunded liability.

…..

The practice of distributing unfunded promises to pay money in the future has been a key of the tool chest that politicians have employed in misleading the citizenry that Illinois has lived up to constitutional balanced budget requirements, when in truth it has done anything but.

Author(s): Bill Bergman

Publication Date: 8 June 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting