A quick glance through the campaign sites of the candidates for NYC Comptroller shows that all of them avoid talking about the two most important questions in state and local public finance, the questions whose answers determine how much worse off people will be in the future than today (as taxpayers, service recipients, future public employees, or all three), and how much more will today’s interests be allowed to take from that future. When determining how much money the City of New York has to contribute to its pension funds, and the cost of past and future retroactive pension enrichments for past and present public employees, what is the rate of return on pension assets that is fair and reasonable to assume, and from what level of assets? And how much more will people have to pay in the future to fund the retiree health insurance being granted in return for services provided today?
If any of the candidates want to contact me over the weekend with a rate and a reason, perhaps I’ll write about this contest on Monday. Otherwise, what’s the point? One hint — the right rate of return is what the state legislature said it was in 2000, to justify the deals it cut, is the wrong answer. As is taking on higher and higher risks of massive losses to try to hit that number.