http://www.bondbuyer.com/issues/121_77/ravitch-brodsky-status-pension-obligations-1038831-1.html
Richard Ravitch and Richard Brodsky have experience with governmental fiscal trouble. Cities, counties and states continue to struggle with unfunded pension liabilities, prompting the question of whether pension obligations represent debt or values, a debate the pair recently engaged in.
“I don’t think pension benefits are a debt,” said Brodsky, a former New York State Assemblyman from New York City’s Westchester County suburbs. “We have to distinguish between debt and social and legal obligations we have to fill. It’s a complicated world out there. Who are you going to hit and who’s going to suffer?”
Brodsky, and other prominent New York leaders, including Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor, debated pensions, bankruptcy and other facets of municipal distress last week at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Samuel & Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance.
http://www.clevelandfed.org/Forefront/2012/winter/ff_2012_winter_10.cfm
Apparently public pension benefits are protected in some states:
"In at least 27 states, pension members' past and future accruals are protected, but to different degrees ... [thereby complicating] the task of modifying current members' pension plans. These states treat public pension plans as contracts that must conform to constitutional, statutory, or common law (the last of these was developed through court decisions interpreting statutes or constitutions)." (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)
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