Tag: Reason Foundation

California financial audit arrives a year late and raises flags about unemployment benefits paid

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://reason.org/commentary/california-financial-audit-arrives-a-year-late-and-raises-flags-about-unemployment-benefits-paid/

Excerpt:

On Feb. 3, 2022, the state of California finally produced its audited financial statements for its fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020. The filing, known as an annual comprehensive financial report, was over a year late and came with an unpleasant surprise in the form of a qualified audit opinion.

State and local governments are normally expected to produce financial statements within six-to-nine months of the fiscal year’s end. California has now missed the nine-month municipal bond market filing deadline for three consecutive years. And, with less than two months to the deadline for its fiscal year 2021 financial reports (for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2021), another late filing seems inevitable.

California’s financial reporting performance compares poorly with most other states. According to data from Truth in Accounting, the median U.S. state produced its 2020 annual comprehensive financial report 184 days after the end of its fiscal year. By contrast, California took 583 days, nearly 20 months, to file its annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2020. For added perspective, it is worth noting that the Securities and Exchange Commission gives large corporations just 60 days to produce their audited financials.

Author(s): Marc Joffe

Publication Date: 7 Feb 2022

Publication Site: Reason

Sagging Stocks Aren’t the Only Threat to Pension Plans

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.governing.com/finance/sagging-stocks-arent-the-only-threat-to-pension-plans

Excerpt:

You need money to make money, and the programs long in trouble didn’t have enough assets on hand to take full advantage of a banner year. Say your plan started 2021 with a funding level of 80 percent (meaning you had enough assets to cover 80 percent of your anticipated liabilities). With a 30 percent return, your plan would then be 104 percent funded. But if you only started with a 30 percent funding level, the same percentage gain would bump you up only to 39 percent funded.

“The problem of a deeply underfunded plan is that they don’t have a lot of assets, so big returns aren’t as helpful to them,” says Donald Boyd, co-director of the Project on State and Local Government Finance at the University at Albany. “They’ve still got a huge way to go.”

….

Maintaining discipline has been hard. When pension plans have a good year, as in 2021, there’s a temptation for legislators to skip contributions. This would be akin to an individual seeing her retirement account gain $10,000 and figuring she can skip that year’s $5,000 contribution.

The problem is that you have to maximize your gains in good years, not fritter them away, because inevitably you’re going to have to make up for bad years at some point. “When politicians have a lot of money around, they tend not to put it in the fund,” says the Urban Institute’s Johnson. “When things are bad, they kick the burden down the road and let future taxpayers worry about it.”

Author(s): Alan Greenblatt

Publication Date: 25 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Governing