Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Detroit Spent Billions Extra on Pensions
Detroit’s municipal pension fund made payments for decades to retirees, active workers and others above and beyond normal benefits, costing the struggling city billions of dollars and helping push it into bankruptcy, according to people who have reviewed the payments.
The payments, which were not publicly disclosed, included bonuses to retirees, supplements to workers not yet retired and cash to the families of workers who died before becoming eligible to collect a pension, according to reports by an outside actuary and other people with knowledge of the matter.
......
When asked on what legal authority the trustees made the payments, Mr. Harris said, “My understanding was, it had to be approved by City Council, and council was under the belief that the money was there — that the pension funds were earning the money — with the consideration that in bad times the city would be making up the difference. I hate to say that. Ultimately the fund has to be funded by the taxpayers.”
......
And then the city’s contributions were not enough. So much money had been drained from the pension fund that by 2005, Detroit could no longer replenish it from its dwindling tax revenue. Instead, the city turned to the public bond markets, borrowed $1.44 billion and used that to fill the hole. Even that did not work. In June, Detroit failed to make a $39.7 million interest payment on that borrowing — the first default of what was soon to become the biggest municipal bankruptcy case in American history.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/undisclosed-payments-cost-detroit-pension-plan-billions/?_r=1&
Disgraceful. Without this kind of malfeasance Detroit probably would not be in the awful position that it is in today.
10 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Octafish .. here's a nice follow-up to that excellent free press piece.
Now that the Free Press has scrutinized Coleman Young’s financial stewardship and declared him the “most austere Detroit mayor since World War II,” maybe it’s time to re-examine other aspects of Young’s 20 years in office.
And maybe fair-minded observers will eventually conclude that Young was a much better mayor than his reputation in the 21st Century would suggest. And perhaps we can even agree that Young, at least for the first eight to 10 years of his two decades in the Manoogian Mansion, was even Detroit’s best mayor since the city began its 60-year decline...
In 2009, when Time magazine embedded its staffers in the city for a year, Daniel Okrent, writing the magazine’s cover story, said among the chief reasons “Detroit careened off the road” was “the corrosive two-decade rule of a black politician who cared more about retribution than about resurrection … a talented politician who spent much of his 20 years in office devoting his talents to the politics of revenge.”
That’s an evaluation that is shared by legions of Young critics. Yet such a negative interpretation doesn’t square with the Free Press’ findings that Young probably did more to steer Detroit away from the financial abyss than the eight other mayors who have run Detroit since 1950...
http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/6447/coleman_young_might_be_a_saint_if_he_hadn_t_confronted_white_people_with_their_racism
And maybe fair-minded observers will eventually conclude that Young was a much better mayor than his reputation in the 21st Century would suggest. And perhaps we can even agree that Young, at least for the first eight to 10 years of his two decades in the Manoogian Mansion, was even Detroit’s best mayor since the city began its 60-year decline...
In 2009, when Time magazine embedded its staffers in the city for a year, Daniel Okrent, writing the magazine’s cover story, said among the chief reasons “Detroit careened off the road” was “the corrosive two-decade rule of a black politician who cared more about retribution than about resurrection … a talented politician who spent much of his 20 years in office devoting his talents to the politics of revenge.”
That’s an evaluation that is shared by legions of Young critics. Yet such a negative interpretation doesn’t square with the Free Press’ findings that Young probably did more to steer Detroit away from the financial abyss than the eight other mayors who have run Detroit since 1950...
http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/6447/coleman_young_might_be_a_saint_if_he_hadn_t_confronted_white_people_with_their_racism
Which, I thought, was honestly refreshing for a sitting mayor. The original Pruneface of popular culture was a Dick Tracy villain, a businessman-cum-NAZI agent.
Something else Corporate McPravda fails to mention about the late, great Mayor: He was a pro-union activist, attorney, and Tuskegee Airman who stood up to Joe McCarthy and -- unlike Ronnie Pruneface -- would not snitch on other liberals, progressives, socialists, communists or anyone who was being free to believe in whatever they wanted to believe.
http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/ELEPHANT/Young.htm
