After a short period of decline, public pension debt is once again piling up in the Lone Star State.
According to a November 2017 report from the Pension Review Board, unfunded liabilities, or the gap between promised benefits and the funds on hand to make good on those promises, among state and local pension plans has grown to more than $66.5 billion. That’s an increase in pension debt of almost $1 billion dollars since August 2017 and a spike of about $5.4 billion over the course of the last 5 reporting periods.
Looked at a little differently, Texas’ $66.5 billion dollar pension problem is enough to swamp every man, woman, and child in the Lone Star State with a debt of $2,350. That figures too has steadily increased over the last several reporting periods.
All of this raises an important question: how much is too much?