talltex wrote:The roads, bridges, parks, etc... are paid for by the taxpayers, with their tax dollars. The Police and Fire Pension Funds are strictly for the benefit of the Police and Fire Department employees and are managed independently of the other City employees benefit programs. They made risky investments that promised higher than normal market returns and based the promised benefits on achieving those higher rates of return. The fault lies with the DPFP's own management and has nothing to do with the other obligations of the city maintaining infrastructure and providing facilities and services to the rest of the population that has paid for them.
If the government - really the taxpayers - made the contributions to the pension fund when the public servant was serving the public, the taxpayers have already paid once. Why should they pay twice? If a construction company is paid by the government - really the taxpayers - to build or repair bridges or roads, they have been paid. If the construction company's pension fund has problems, they shouldn't be able to go back to the taxpayers and demand we pay twice.
The problem is many municipal pension funds are mismanaged. They promise more than they can deliver. They let their people retire 20 years earlier than the taxpayers. They let their people borrow from the fund, without having to pay back the principal plus the fund's required rate or return - whether that's 8, 10, 12 percent that the fund needs to stay solvent. The fund managers and the fund beneficiaries dug themselves into a hole and they need to stop digging. Throwing more money into a money pit doesn't fix problems.
TL;DR - socialism works great until you run out of other people's money