Last year, Rhode Island enacted what experts said was the
most far-reaching, sophisticated public pension reform in the country to date,
becoming a model for other states and cities seeking to reshape their own
ballooning pension systems, Reuters tells us.
Yet the smallest state in the United States can't say it has
won the fight: the reform didn't apply to dozens of independent local pension
plans, many of which are sorely underfunded and are stuck fending mostly for
themselves.
Whether towns have acted urgently on pension reform,
however, is another matter. At a heated town council meeting in West Warwick in
June, the biggest item on the agenda was a long-running squabble with the
school board about whether to hand over a few million dollars to spare cuts in
sports and music programs.
Sean Henseler, a parent and coach, was trying to get the
message out that the real demon on the fiscal horizon was the town's nearly
$235 million of unfunded liabilities for pension and other retirement benefits.
"That's the iceberg they've already hit. The Titanic is going down,"
Henseler said after the meeting. "These guys are paying lawyers to
rearrange the deck chairs."
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