< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

When a public employee pension plan with a funding ratio under 1 percent isn’t the biggest fiscal problem your administration faces, you know you’re in trouble. That’s exactly the situation faced by Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, 44. The commonwealth’s two major pension plans, the Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System, have staggering unfunded liabilities: As much as 99.3 percent, or $30 billion, for the employees’ system; 88.5 percent, or $13.1 billion, for the teachers’. The most optimistic recent data suggests the employees’ assets will be fully depleted by 2021, when the commonwealth will have to find more than $1 billion a year to pay retirees. Yet the estimated $45 billion pension shortfall isn’t the really bad news. In 2013, before its credit rating was slashed to junk, Puerto Rico, with a population of 3.5 million, was the third-largest issuer of U.S. muni debt, behind only New York and California. In June, when Padilla announced that Puerto Rico owed more than $72 billion to creditors and couldn’t pay, the muni market sold off. With more than $1 billion in bond payments coming due between December 1 and January 1, the commonwealth and its representatives have been in intense negotiations with creditors. Meanwhile, Congress, the White House and the U.S. Treasury Department are exploring options that include letting Puerto Rico file for bankruptcy, which it’s now banned from doing. Padilla is up for reelection in 2016 and expected to face a tough fight to stay in office. If he survives the election and debt negotiations, he will still confront the enormous pension shortfall.

 
The 2015 Pension 40

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Sponsored Fireside Chat: Why We’re Bullish About Asset-Based Private Credit Sponsored by Castlelake November 3, 2025 3. Chris Christie New Jersey 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor

6. Kevin de León California 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions

11. John Kline Minnesota 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution

16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. 17. Mark Mullet Washington 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon

21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley

26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch Utah 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business

31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp.

36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department