Ted Sickinger, the reporter at the O who best understands money, has a howler of a story posted here. The Oregon public employee pension system lost money on its investments last year, despite the projection, under which it operates, that it would make a 6.9 percent profit. Its actual profit for the year was negative 1.55 percent.

So now they’re setting their expectations for the future, and over the course of 2023, markets continue to be lackluster. The pension fund says it made 3.9 percent through August, which might pencil out to about 5.5 percent for the year, but once again, the folks in charge have chosen to budget for 6.9 percent. And these are percentages of extremely large numbers. 

Sheesh. If you and I ran our personal finances the way these guys run the public pension money, we’d be looking for a good parking space for our bombed-out RV somewhere within walking distance of the Sextant Bar.

When the pension gurus don’t make budget, the various levels of government have no choice but to pay more tax dollars into the system, which means less money available for public services. We’ve been warned for a few decades about this, but now the problem is visible. When you drive around Portland and wonder why there’s no money to stop the gang violence, clean up all the hideous graffiti, bust the drug dealers, house the homeless, and give out tickets to the many lethally dangerous drivers, a big part of the answer is that the taxes are going to pay retired bureaucrats, cops, bus drivers, firefighters, and everybody else who once appeared anywhere on the public pad. (Except the Portland police and firefighters, who have their own “system,” under which zero has been put aside for their pensions. That’s right, zero.)

As Sickinger knows and has been trying to tell Oregonians for a long time, the situation has been getting steadily worse for more than a decade now, and the people in charge have been thinking magically and pulling the public’s leg. If you don’t like the looks of the place now, you definitely aren’t going to like where it’s going next.