Maryland Benefits Loom Large

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Maryland has promised its current and future retirees $20 billion in health care benefits, a staggering figure that could put leaders in Annapolis under intense pressure to divert as much as $1.9 billion a year from other programs or risk losing the state's coveted AAA bond rating, according to a report due out Monday.

Warren Deschenaux, the longtime chief fiscal analyst for the General Assembly, who has written a summary of the report for legislators, said yesterday that those costs are significantly larger than initial estimates of a $3 billion liability. Other legislative staff who read the report confirmed its contents.

You might want to read this whole piece.Other state governments will run into the same problem.Just because a state has a triple A credit rating today doesn't mean they will in the near future.