The City’s retirement overhaul plan, which was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court, changes in actuarial estimates and new pension accounting rules combined to increase the City’s Municipal Employees’ Pension unfunded position by $11.5 billion (162%) to $18.6 billion.
Note that the this change only covers the Municipal Employees’ Pension plan and does not cover the Policemen’s and Firemen’s plans. As of the most recently available City CAFR (fiscal year ended 12/31/2014) the Policemen’s and Firemen’s plans had a combined unfunded position of $11.7 billion. Applying the same percentage increase, these two plans would balloon to $30.7 billion!
These three pension plans could have a combined unfunded position of over $49 billion. To put this into context, the City reported $30.7 billion of debt as of 12/31/2014.
