Legally and arithmetically, municipal pension plans have nothing to do with the the Florida Retirement System.
Politically, they mean a lot, though.
The LeRoy Collins Institute recently issued a report, appropriately titled “Tough Choices,” evaluating 151 municipal pension plans across Florida. It was an update of a 2011 report, using more detailed measurements, and the results indicate that whoever dubbed economics “the dismal science” might have had Florida city pensions in mind.
Only about 30 percent of plans got an A or B from the Collins Institute. In 2007, it gave half of them high marks.
The number of cities rating an F for pension health more than doubled from 2011, going from 5 percent to 11 percent. The number getting a D on their pension reports jumped two and a half times, from 14 to 35 percent.
