This is really nice, but all of these "citizen" committees follow one of two paths:
- They get stuffed with insiders like the Police Review board
- They get ignored like PURB and the water bureau

We really should save the money, govt is a juggernaut.

PURB is stuffed with insiders since Leonard/Shaff began screening and placing applicants. It just makes things simple.

I understood the $4 billion (see top of page 9) was the unfunded healthcare liability based on a 2008 Mercer Consulting report. Like Portland's FPDR fund, SFO's retiree healthcare is unfunded (paid out of the current operating budget).

The annual outlay for BOTH healthcare and pension costs is projected to exceed $1 billion by 2015.

What would prevent Portland from forming a Civil Grand Jury, Jack?

This is another example of how the Portland electorate is so incredibly financially naive. The electorate actually bought cityhall's spiel that pension under funding would be solved by increasing your property taxes now (for some lower level in the long, long term. a measure back in '06 I think). The electorate voted by a significant majority to allow city hall more tax and bonding authority to manage pension liabilities.

My advice: if it's coming out of this cityhall, automatically vote against it. As Garret Morris was fond of saying on Saturaday Night Live, "You've been hosed, man!"

Sometimes I wonder if on lists throughout our area, "insiders" haven't seen to it that they are placed within almost every group already.

There is just way too much silence about critical issues in our area. Why?

Often committees have been stacked with enough people to bring the "outcome" needed. Put downs and/or impatience have been directed towards those who have questions. Sometimes the reason given is that they don't have time to go in depth over these matters.

The system then whether deliberate or not, is set up to move serious matters forward, or to continue without serious discussion and/or consideration. (from the public anyway)

I believe that one way to address this would be to slow down and in some cases a moratorium needed. Stop pushing the agenda beyond what can be reasonably dealt with.

"My advice: if it's coming out of this cityhall"

I'd amend that by saying:

If it comes out of City Hall with unanimous support, then vote NO.

If funds are invested exclusively in US Treasury notes then it would not make sense to fund it in advance of the fiscal period when a bill actually becomes due and payable. You can account for the future obligations just as you would a stream of payments due on an outstanding bond.

If an individual employee wants to manage their own savings then recognize such an individual right to take their pay now and let them do with it as they see fit, and either claim it as taxable earnings or take advantage of the myriad of retirement savings schemes that are offered by the IRS to ordinary people.

There is no inherent logical wisdom to the notion that there be anything funded at all, except of course if you are a Wall Street Pawn that would like to compel folks (including government, as with Pension Obligation Bond proceeds) to entrust money to folks like Bernie Madoff.

This whole "funded unfunded" crap is inextricably tied to investment in risky stocks, where visions of sugar plum rates of return means that the amount deducted from pay checks is far too low to cover the risk that the sugar plums are instead rotten apples.

PDXNAG,

You're simply wrong.

If you are going to promise a pension benefit to employees that pays them a defined amount of money from the day they retire until the day they die, you should set aside some money every year they work for you. It doesn't matter if that "set aside" is invested in Treasury Bonds, Stocks, or bank CDs.

The simple fact that every other large city in the country does it that way indicates it's the prudent thing to do.

To pay all future pension benefits out of current revenue creates a multitude of risks: what if inflation spikes and your tax revenues are flat or declining (made worse if your beneficiaries get COLAs)? What if your population declines while the number of retirees continues to rise? What if you lose your ability to issue new municipal bonds, and you experience cash flow problems: those pension benefits are probably the first in line, which means you could layoff current fire and police employees in order to support the retired ones.