Letter to the editors.

• Author: Skiba, Jr., Richard H.
• Position: Letter to the Editor

I [am writing about] the Government Finance Review article by Jeff McElravy and Leo Yonghong Liang entitled "Debt Capacity Analysis for Local Governments" (October 2004, pages 41-46). Their capacity analysis relies on "peer group" mean or median benchmarks. Using various debt ratio analyses, this article claims, "Once the jurisdiction under analysis has reached the peer group mean, its debt levels are consistent with the average jurisdiction, and are therefore affordable." The article goes on to state, "Almost all of the data can be found in comprehensive annual financial reports."

The glaring omission of this article is its failure to include debt buried in the required supplemental information section of those comprehensive annual financial reports, namely pension and post-retirement benefit unfunded liabilities, as general debt for the purposes of this "capacity analysis." This informal, off balance sheet actuarial debt is...