Mariana Trujillo is a policy analyst with Reason Foundation's Pension Integrity Project. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from George Mason University. Before joining Reason Foundation, she worked in Treasury Market Risk at JP Morgan, the Mercatus Center, and the Cato Institute.
Trujillo’s research has examined the efficacy of common practices in public pensions. In a recent commentary, “Public pension reforms aren’t impacting public employee turnover rates,” she explored the impact on public employee recruitment and retention of moving new employees to a defined contribution plan, which was presented at the Alaska House of Representatives. In other writings, she has explored the consequences of low pension funding, discussing how Mississippi’s faulty contributions have led to credit downgrades and writing discouraging the issuance of pension obligation bonds by the city of Dallas, which was featured in The Bond Buyer. Trujillo previously moderated an expert panel on how pensions impact the recruitment and retention of public employees.
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Debt trends for state and local governments 2020-2022
This tool provides debt and spending insights for the 100 largest municipalities, counties and school districts in America and all 50 states for fiscal years 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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City debt: New York has more than four times the liabilities of Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and other cities
New York City, the District of Columbia, Chicago, Atlanta, Yonkers and Austin have the most per capita liabilities.
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County debt: Los Angeles, Miami-Dade and Cook counties among worst in nation
Los Angeles County had $54 billion in liabilities at the end of 2022. Miami-Dade County had $29 billion in total liabilities.
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State debt: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Texas each have over $200 billion in total liabilities
On a per capita basis, Connecticut's $27,031 total liabilities per capita are worst in the nation, followed by New Jersey.
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Annual pension solvency and performance report
At the end of the 2023 fiscal year, the nation's public pension systems had $1.59 trillion in total unfunded liabilities.
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The case for Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails
The “fiscal guardrails” have saved Connecticut more than $170 million and could save $7 billion over the next 25 years.