City of Milwaukee Pension a Ticking Time Bomb According to Northwestern Study

[Milwaukee, Wisc…] The City of Milwaukee has the 10th worst municipal unfunded pension liability in the nation, according to a new report out of Northwestern University.

At $3.4 billion, the unfunded pension liability in Milwaukee is $14,853 per household. Without major changes, the system will not be able to make scheduled payments in less than twenty years.

Municipality

(Number of plans)

Liabilities, Stated Basis, June ’09 ($B)

Liabilities (ABO), Treasury Rate

Net Pension Assets ($B)

Unfunded Liability ($B)

Unfunded Liability / Revenue

Unfunded Liability per Household ($)
Chicago (7) 46.3 66.6 21.8 44.8 763% 41,966
New York City (5) 155.8 214.8 92.6 122.3 276% 38,886
San Francisco (1) 16.3 22.6 13.3 9.3 266% 34,940
Boston (1) 7.4 11.0 3.6 7.5 430% 30,901
Detroit (2) 8.1 11.0 4.6 6.4 402% 18,643
Los Angeles (3) 34.6 49.3 23.2 26.1 378% 18,193
Philadelphia (1) 9.0 13.0 3.4 9.7 290% 16,690
Cincinnati (1) 2.2 3.2 1.2 2.0 321% 15,681
Baltimore (2) 4,4 6.4 2.7 3.7 260% 15,420
Milwaukee (1) 4.4 6.7 3.3 3.4 687% 14,853

Prior research by the Kellogg School of Management has found $3 trillion in unfunded legacy liabilities from state-sponsored pension plans. However, new research finds additional liabilities from municipalities that magnify the growing public pension crisis.

The paper, “The Crisis in Local Government Pensions in the United States,” is co-authored by Joshua Rauh of the Kellogg School and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester.

“This new paper calculates the present value of local government employee pension liabilities for about two-thirds of total local government employees, and estimates the unfunded obligation for the remaining one-third of workers covered by municipal plans not in our sample,” said Rauh, associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School. “In total, we estimate that municipal plans in the U.S. are carrying $574 billion in off-balance-sheet debt in the form of unfunded pension obligations.”