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Oklahoma provides picture of coming nationwide unfunded state pension crisis
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
03/11/10 6:21 PM EST
So you get home in the evening from a hard day at the office and grab your mail. There, you find an official-looking envelope from the State of Oklahoma. You open it and read it. And then you faint.
Why? It's a bill for $9,000. That's your family's share of the $14.8 billion required to fund the state's Teacher Retirement System and other state-level public sector pensions that Oklahoma politicians have for years been making more generous without providing a way to pay for that generosity.
So you, the taxpayer, get hit with huge bill. This imagined scene is anything but beyond the possible, as CapitolBeatOk.org's latest report demonstrates. And Oklahoma is far from being unique in having such a problem. As the Pew Center on the States reported recently, almost every state in the country faces unfunded pension liabilities that collectively are almost unfathomable.
The situation in Oklahoma is serious. You can check the numbers for yourself here. You can also see how your home state compares with Boomer Sooner land. Make sure you are sitting down when do that, though!
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Topics
Oklahoma , Pew Center on the States , Unfunded Pension Liability , Politics , Congress , DemocratsFollow The Examiner
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