A new issue brief from the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, Gauging the Burden of Public Pensions on Cities, examines how much city residents pay for pensions – not just for city pensions, but also for school district and county pensions. The brief’s key findings include:

• Media stories suggest – especially since the bankruptcy of Detroit – that pensions are the major expense of American cities and could lead to widespread collapse.
• A comprehensive measure of the cost burden considers how much city taxpayers pay for the pensions of city and county general government workers and teachers.
• For a sample of 173 cities, these overall pension costs equal 7.9 percent of the total revenue base.
• The cost burden ranges from 12.3 percent for the highest cost quintile to 2.7 percent for the lowest cost quintile.