< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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Rahm Emanuel
Mayor
Chicago
Last year: 2
In October, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 55, announced his 2015 budget but limited his remarks on pensions to agreements negotiated with several groups of city employees. “Working with our partners in organized labor, we passed reforms that will shore up the pension plans serving half of our city’s workforce — making sure that both retirees and taxpayers are respected,” he said. Despite the upbeat message, Emanuel’s efforts to reduce Chicago’s pension deficit have stirred union opposition and made his reelection more difficult. The city’s six pension funds have an unfunded liability of $26.8 billion. Agreements reached with two of the plans have been challenged in the courts, and larger battles loom with police, fire and teachers’ unions. At $18,596 a head, Chicago has the highest per beneficiary pension deficit of any major U.S. city. Without changes, Chicago’s operating costs will mushroom from $270 million in 2015 to $3.5 billion in 2016. The city needs to pump as much as $1 billion into pension coffers in 2016, up from $557 million in 2015, or face further debt downgrades. Last March, Moody’s Investors Service cut Chicago’s rating and warned of a further downgrade if it failed to raise taxes to fund annual contributions. Making matters worse, in November an Illinois court overturned state pension reforms that Emanuel had helped champion, and some of the mayor’s opponents are calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate allegations that Emanuel accepted campaign donations from asset managers that invest city pension money. Tough times.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
