Just hide what you do and everything is going to be OK.

News from The Akron Beacon Journal. Despite spending more than $4 billion annually on state and local government pensions, Ohio taxpayers have little access to retirement records.

They cannot find out how much individual public retirees receive.

Or how much workers — and taxpayers — paid toward their pensions.

Or how many years they worked.

Or even, in some cases, who’s getting the benefits.

State law prevents Ohio’s five public pension systems from disclosing many details about individual retirees.

With state leaders discussing reforms for the pension systems and the possibility that taxpayers may be asked to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more annually, that lack of openness raises questions (Information has been corrected to fix an error. See correction at end of story. 7:54 a.m., June 21, 2010).

How can taxpayers be assured that they aren’t being taken advantage of? How well do pension systems track and catch potential abuse? And how can state lawmakers consider changes without examining the specific details?

My point. People pay taxes and then they cannot find out what happened to their money.

My suspicion, and it is an educated guess, is that the politicians would make every effort to publicise it if the pension fund was doing spectacularly well .

One more point. This is the reason the Fed has to keep printing money. To revive pension funds around the country.

George Dagnino, PhD
Editor, The Peter Dag Portfolio. Since 1977
Ranked Top Market Timer in 2009 and 2010 by Timer Digest

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