Millions of state and local gov¿t. employees are promised pension benefits when they retire. There is a fed. interest in ensuring that all Americans have a secure retirement. Recently, new accounting standards have called for the reporting of liabilities for future retiree health benefits. It is unclear what actions state and local governments may take once the extent of these liabilities becomes clear, but such anticipated fiscal and economic challenges have raised questions about the unfunded liabilities for state and local retiree benefits. This is a report on: (1) the current structure of state and local gov¿t. pension plans and how pension benefits are protected and managed; and (2) the current funded status of state and local gov¿t. pension plans. Charts.

Recent market declines have significantly diminished the asset value of state and local pension plans (PP). Reported unfunded liabil. for these plans are estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. As a result, in the long term, these governments may need to make significant fiscal adjustments such as modifying employee benefits, or increasing contributions to plans. They may also alter invest. strategies to attempt to maximize returns by assuming increased risk. This report examined: (1) who makes invest. decisions for PP and what guides their decision making; (2) how PP allocate their assets and manage their invest.; and (3) practices that PP are using to meet a range of challenges in governance, invest., or funding. Illus. A print on demand report.

The most recent recession, which started in Dec. 2007, is believed to be the worst economic downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. In response to this recession, Congress passed the Recovery Act, which provided state and local governments with $282 billion in fiscal assistance. The Recovery Act requires an evaluation of how national economic downturns have affected states since 1974. This report: (1) analyzes how state and local government budgets are affected during national recessions; and (2) identifies strategies to provide fiscal assistance to state and local governments and indicators policymakers could use to time and target such assistance. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.

When States Go Broke discusses the ongoing fiscal crisis among the American states.

State and local government fiscal systems have increasingly become vulnerable to economic changes. Over the past three decades, state and local deficits during economic recession have been larger and deeper each time. The impact of the Great Recession and its aftermath of feeble growth and lingering high unemployment has been dramatic both in scope and intensity. Before the crisis, long-term structural deficits were persistent for both individual governments and the entire sector as spending plans and patterns outpaced governments' revenue-generating capacity. The revenue systems of these governments eroded while the workloads and scope on the expenditure side of the state and local system budget continued to grow. This handbook evaluates the persistent problems in the fiscal systems of state and local governments and what can be done to solve them. It contains 35 chapters authored by 60 practitioners and academics who are renowned scholars in state and local finance. Each chapter provides a description of the discipline area, examines major developments in policy, practices and research, and opines on future prospects. The chapters are divided into four sections. Section I is a systematic discussion of the institutional, economic, and political framework that provides a background for understanding the structure and financial performance of the state and local sector. The chapters in Section II provide an overview of the various components of state and local revenue systems and how they reacted to the Great Recession. They analyze the diverse forms of taxes and charges in detail, prescribe remedies and alternatives, and examine the implications for future revenue performance. Chapters in Section III turn to spending, borrowing and financial management in the state and local sector. The focus is on the big six service delivery sectors: education, health care, human services, transportation, pensions, and housing. Section IV is a set of chapters that look ahead and speculate about how the state and local government sector's money-raising, spending, and service delivery structures will adjust to the new circumstances.

People covered by public pensions are often the subject of 'pension envy:' that is, their benefits might seem more generous and their contributions lower than those offered by the private sector. Yet this book points out that such judgments are often inaccurate, since civil servants hold jobs with few counterparts in private industry, such as firefighters, police, judges, and teachers. Often these are riskier, dirtier, and demand more loyalty and discretion than would be required of a more mobile labor force in the private sector. The debate challenges traditional ideas about how the public employee labor contract is structured and raises questions about how such employees are attracted to the public sector, retained and motivated on the job, and retired, via an entire compensation package of wages and benefits. Authors explore aspects of these schemes, addressing the cost and valuation debate, along with the political economy of how public pension asset pools are perceived and managed, an increasingly important topic in times of global financial turmoil. The discussion also explores ways that public pensions can be strengthened in the US, Japan, Canada, and Germany. The volume captures a vigorous debate currently underway by academics, financial experts, regulators, and plan sponsors, all seeking to define a new future for public retirement systems. It will be of substantial interest to a wide range of readers, since public sector employees and their representatives will naturally find the comparisons and arguments over valuation of keen interest. Public pension administrators and policymakers seeking an explanation of what makes these plans so costly will gain a new understanding of how the arguments stack up. Private sector employers and plan sponsors can learn much from efforts to reform these retirement systems in states and countries around the world. Finally, investors and the taxpaying public more generally may be at risk to cover these long-term promises, so it behoves them to pay close attention to the financing and investment practices of these plans, along with their valuation. This volume represents an invaluable addition to the Pension Research Council / Oxford University Press series as it includes actuarial, economic, and financial perspectives making it useful for academics, retirement plan administrators, and public employees wishing to understand the challenges facing public pensions.

Relations between state governments and their respective local governments are of crucial importance, yet they have remained largely unexplored by scholars. This neglect is all the more surprising in light of the fact that most public services are provided directly to citizens by general-purpose local governments, who are themselves subject to varying degrees of control by their respective state governments. In State-Local Governmental Interactions, Joseph F. Zimmerman builds on work conducted for the US Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations pertaining to local government discretionary authority, intergovernmental service agreements, state and federal mandates, and voluntary and state-mandated transfers of functional responsibility. He demonstrates that the degree of control states exercise over their political subdivisions varies greatly, from very tight control in Vermont to relatively little control in Maine. Particular emphasis is placed on the legal relationships between a state and its various types of political subdivisions. The volume concludes with recommendations for the establishment of a state-local governmental partnership.