"You Got A Problem With My Math, Teach?"

To borrow Lenny Bruce’s description of Chicago, New Jersey is so corrupt, it’s thrilling. In 2005, according to today's New York Times, the Garden State “put either $551 million, $56 million or nothing into its pension fund for teachers. All three figures appeared in various state documents — though the state now says that the actual amount was zero.”

Well, what’s a single half billion dollar accounting error in a pension fund with reported total assets (key word: “reported”) of $79 billion, after all? Oh, but wait. It seems this isn’t some one time accounting error after all. Frederick J. Beaver, director of the Division of Pensions and Benefits in the New Jersey Treasury Department, told the Times the state has been “doing it on a repeat basis.” Indeed, the Times reports:

The phantom contribution is just one indication that New Jersey has been diverting billions of dollars from its pension fund for state and local workers into other government purposes over the last 15 years, using a variety of unorthodox transactions authorized by the Legislature and by governors from both political parties.

There, of course, the key phrase is “both political parties.”

There has been much public outcry over fraudulent accounting practices in a handful of publicly owned corporations over the past decade, especially so when vested employee pension plans have been at risk. Appropriately so. Let’s see if there is similar outrage, especially from the Left, sufficient to require state governments to abide by the same accounting and funding practices private organizations are held to under ERISA.