This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.
Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.
Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.
Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”More about pensions here
Interactive Map of Public Pension Plans; How Badly Underfunded are the Plans in Your State?
Cuts have consequences.
Case in point: Newark has seen a recent crime spike, coinciding with cuts made to its police force, thanks to the ugly state of the city's finances.
Under star mayor Cory Booker, the city has done better than many would have guessed in getting crime numbers down, but there's only so much that can be accomplished with effort, when the resources aren't there to keep people safe.
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