Retirement Security Law Commons^™

Who’S Afraid Of Good Governance? State Fiscal Crises, Public Pension Underfunding, And The Resistance To Governance Reform, Thomas J. Fitzpatrick, Amy B. Monahan

Florida Law Review

Much attention has been paid to the significant underfunding of many state and local employee pension plans, as well as to efforts by states and cities to alleviate that underfunding by modifying the benefits provided to workers. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the systemic causes of such financial distress—such as chronic underfunding that shifts financial burdens to future taxpayers, and governance rules that may reduce the likelihood that a plan’s trustees will make optimal investment decisions. This Article presents the results of a qualitative study of the funding and governance provisions of twelve public pension plans that …