How Houston is Closing its $7.8 bn Unfunded Pension Liability

[JFman00]

Source

1) More realistic accounting (accepting higher liability via lower discount rate and discovering unstated losses)
2) Scaling back COLA and phasing out DROP
3) NO transition to 401k
4) Phasing in 30-year ammortization of the liability from open-ended ammortization
5) Most interestingly: Committing the city to a range contribution rates based on market performance. If funds are doing well, liability reduction is accelerated (and assuming it's eventually closed, benefits would be raised) while benefit cuts are back on the table if doing poorly.

[Kerry]

Yet they still have $5.2 billion in unfunded liability AND now they have $1 billion in new debt that has to be repaid with interest - and no way to do that either.  Issuing new debt to pay future debt is NOT a solution.  The hard reality is, people expecting a retirement check from their government job aren't going to get it.

[JFman00]

Given the historically low rates for borrowing, it makes sense as a way to get beneficiaries on board with benefit cuts. Instead of waiting until the plan was entirely broken just to be able to say "told you so," or instantly but temporarily closing the liability withing fixing the cause (contributions/payouts/returns missmatch) they got an actual long-term solution that all the stakeholders bought into. I can't think of a better compromise. Certainly better than Jax's most recent reform which only kicked the can.

[Kerry]

If nothing else, I guess I have to admire your optimism.