Waste of the Day: Report Shows Major Cities In Debt
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This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire
By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire
Topline: The 75 largest cities in America were collectively $288 billion in debt at the end of fiscal year 2022, according to think tank Truth in Accounting.
Key facts: The new “Financial State of the Cities” report found 53 major cities that do not have enough money to pay their bills.
Yet all of them claimed their budgets were balanced, as is required by law. That means lawmakers understated each city’s debt by not including future costs like employee pensions and healthcare, according to Truth in Accounting.
The report ranked cities based on their “taxpayer burden”: the amount each taxpayer would need to spend for the government to pay off all its debt tomorrow.
