LaborUnionReport
RedState
12/18/2010
You’ve been hearing for quite a while now that public-sector unions are a threat to the economic survival of the United States. With an estimated unfunded liability of up to $3 trillion (and perhaps much more), public-sector pensions are a noose around the neck of America’s taxpayers and it is threatening to strangle the nation.
More specifically, you’ve been hearing that the expensive wage and benefits packages that union-bought Democrats have given to their union benefactors could collapse our economy. The question is, can we stop it before it it too late, or at a minimum, contain the damage?
Well, little by little, signs are showing that, in some cases, the public-sector house of cards is already starting to fall.
Chicago’s Mayor Daley Discusses Bankruptcy For City Pensions
Mayor Daley is begging Governor Quinn for pension reform.
Quinn now has on his desk a bill that would allow state to withhold sales tax and income tax revenue from cities that won’t do more to fund their pension plans.
Property taxes will have to go up for cities to meet their pension obligations and that is on top of a massive income tax hike that governor Quinn campaigned for.
Daley, aldermen ask Quinn to veto pension measure
The Chicago Tribune reports Daley, aldermen ask Quinn to veto pension measure
Mayor Richard Daley this afternoon expressed his frustration with the city’s pension situation, suggesting that the retirement funds need to be fixed before leaders are forced to declare them bankrupt as a way to restructure.
Speaking on a Global Metro Summit panel at the University of Illinois-Chicago with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Daley at first appeared to indicate that allowing the pensions to go bankrupt so they could be reorganized was something he believes could happen.
“I’m one who believes that pension funds can go bankrupt and then you reorganize, and that’s the hardest thing to say,” Daley said.
Moderator Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time Magazine, then asked Daley: “Let them go bankrupt?”
“Yes, and then you reorganize it,” Daley replied.
In Rhode Island, it has just reached critical mass, as public-sector unions bring a city to “financial ruin.”
You may remember Central Falls, Rhode Island. It made news earlier this year, when the school district fired all of the teachers at Central Falls High School for their miserable record teaching the students, then rehired them a little while later. Well, Central Falls is back in the news and the news is not pretty.
Receiver to city: Financial ruin near
The city’s financial problems are so profound that the only way to solve them is through a merger with Pawtucket or a regionalization of city services, the state-appointed receiver said in a report Thursday to the Carcieri administration.
“Central Falls, in my judgment, cannot remain a stand-alone community as it presently is, unless the state wants to subsidize this into the future,” said retired Superior Court judge Mark A. Pfeiffer, the man appointed by the state Department of Administration in July to run the city, with elected government officials in advisory roles, after those officials had earlier declared the city insolvent…
Read the rest of the article at RedState.com
