Pension Task Force Sets Sights on Cranston's $245 Million Black Hole

Cranston's $245 million underfunded pension plan is in the spotlight.

A national task force today announced they have targeted the woefully underfunded pension plan and hope to use it to shape the political discussion surrounding local pension reform.

"This task force is set up to get the best economic, legal, and policy analysis on how to deal with a pension shortfall at the local level," Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity chief executive officer Mike Stenhouse said. "This is a national crisis that must be solved from the ground up through the principles of fiscal federalism."

The task force is an extension of the group put together last fall for statewide pension reform — the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity's Special Pension Task Force.

Their first step is a website, www.RIOpenGov.org, which has experienced technical difficulties today as retirees, municipal leaders and taxpayers tried to peer into exactly who is paid what within the city's pension plan.

Members of the task force include Eileen Norcross of the Mercatus Center, Rich Danker of American Principles Project, Bob Williams of State Budget Solutions and Stenhouse.

The city's pension plan covers 1714 retirees and is closed to new hires. That means the pool of workers contributing into the system is slowly drying up as city employees retire. Eventually, there will be nobody paying into the plan and that leaves Cranston Mayor Allan W. Fung with few options other than to look at retirees for concessions.

Fung today met with other members of the pension advisory board set up by Governor Lincoln Chafee to focus on local pensions. It was set up some time after state pension reform passed through the General Assembly.

Fung served on the special committee formed to tackle statewide pension reform.

He was selected for the new one likely in part because of his persistent message about the lingering local pension crises during the statewide pension reform debate.

Carlos Lopez, Cranston's director of constiuent affairs, had a positive initial reaction to the task force and its website full of Cranston pension data.

"Anything put up to get the correct information out there to show people that this is a big problem for us and it needs to be tackled is a good thing," Lopez said.

The task force stated in a release that it hoped to provide "research and analysis that may be useful to local officials as they work to design pension reform options for Rhode Island's underfunded municipal pension retirement systems."

Task force members will attend hearings, provide commentary, analysis and participate in any statewide forums that are scheduled.

"This collaboration is a great opportunity to advance best practices in pension reform at the local level," Rich Danker, project director for economics at American Principles Project said. "We hope that the task force's transparent pension fund analysis will foster responsible decision-making."

Though state lawmakers can boast that they addressed the state's pension problem as they campaign this summer, at the local level, the tough job of solving what can seem like the impossible math problem of past promises that add up to future financial ruin has just started.