A tweak to our Portland debt clock
We've been leafing through the City of Portland annual financial statements that have just come on line, and we've adjusted the unfunded pension figure on our debt clock (see left sidebar) in light of our findings. As best we can compute, the city's unfunded liability to its retirees as of Jan. 1, 2011 -- for pensions, health care, and disability benefits -- was about $2.9 billion, and that number was growing at a rate of about 6.5% a year. With those figures in place, the current liability is slightly lower than our debt clock was estimating, but it's still well over $3 billion. And as a result, the city's aggregate long-term debt has slipped below $11,000 per resident for the moment, to just over $10,900. We'll keep monitoring the city's financial data as it is released to keep the clock as up-to-date as we can make it.