SEC: We're Probing Public Pensions

The Bond Buyer reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing a number of governmental entities about the adequacy of their public pension disclosures, chairwoman Mary Schapiro told lawmakers Thursday.

Schapiro’s remarks came during a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee devoted to the one-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Other witnesses included Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., one of the architects of the sweeping financial reform law that bears his name.

During a question and answer period, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., asked Schapiro if the SEC would recommend that muni issuers conform to the pension-disclosure standards proposed earlier this month by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.

Under GASB’s guidance, which is still preliminary, state and local governments would be required to report unfunded pension liabilities in their financial statements, rather than in the footnotes, where such information has historically appeared.

Attention SEC: do you really think Chicago and Cook County run pension systems(for their public employees) cleaner than Enron???