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Discussion of accounting rules seems like a place far away from concern about social justice. However, public sector employment plays a large role for many groups under-represented in the overall job market, and a comfortable retirement has long been an important component of that employment: a potential to step into the middle class. Across the country, this benefit is under attack, with critics calling pension systems unaffordable, unnecessarily extravagant, and blaming them for municipal bankruptcies in cities like Detroit, Stockton, Vallejo, and Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Read the memo explaining why we should care about accounting rules as they apply to municipal pensions.
Download the memo.
