http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/business/23prichard.html?_r=3PRICHARD, Ala. — 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.
And so reckoning descends. Many states are going to hit these bankrupt levels at some point in this decade.
Realistically the big union schemers should not have negotiated so much deferred compensation back in the 80s and 90s.