Moody’s: CA pension obligations enormous, but better than most nationally
By Tom Chorneau
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Although unfunded pension obligations present an enormous challenge to Sacramento in the coming decade, a new survey of state retirement liability shows California in a far better position than many others nationally.
Measuring a state’s unfunded pension responsibility as a ratio of its economic capacity, Moody’s Investor Services reported that the burden posed by California’s pending retirement promises are below the national average.
Moody’s said they undertook the survey as part of an effort to give more comparability and transparency to their credit analyses. The common benchmark was what they called the adjusted net pension liabilities or ANPL, which is drawn from several measures of economic capacity: state revenues, gross domestic product and personal income.
The report, issued late last month, noted that the state’s two biggest pensions – the California Public Employees’