Here’s today’s surprise

HERE’S today’s quiz question. The answer may surprise, even shock, you.

Guess which American city out of the 173 just surveyed in a scholarly study of pension costs leads all the rest when it comes to devoting the highest percentage of its residents’ taxes to pensions.

Nope, not Chicago. It came in only second.

New York? It didn’t even make the top 10; it was 11th.

The People’s Republic of Portland-the one in Oregon-was up there at 10th.

The other Portland-no, not the the one in Arkansas but in rock-ribbed Maine-came out as a model of fiscal probity, ranking 171st out of 173 in how much its pensions cost local taxpayers. Yankee frugality can look mighty good as one American city after another files for bankruptcy, or has to petition a court to get out of it. (See Detroit, Mich.)

So what city led all the others in this index of municipal generosity at their taxpayers’ expense?

According to this amply documented, well-footnoted and carefully qualified paper out of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the winner in this contest to see which city burdens its taxpayers most is . . .

Little Rock, Arkansas.

It’s not exactly the kind of distinction a city would covet.

Little Rock weighs in with 17.6 percent. That’s how much of its residents’ taxes, according to this study, goes to finance pensions.

Remember that higher sales tax Little Rock’s city government and its usual cheerleading section pushed through a couple of years ago?

Now we know where a big chunk of that money goes. It’s taken us a while, but we’re beginning to connect the dots.And the picture they make isn’t pretty.

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This just in from a news story and general disputation on Thursday’s front page: Little Rock’s city government disagrees with this study’s findings, and rejects its award as Most Profligate City Government in the country when it comes to pensions.

Both the city’s Finance and Human Resources departments say the study out of Boston inflates the amount of money local taxpayers have to ante up for pensions. Our news story included much arcane comment about funded and unfunded liabilities, amortization, and ARC, which stands for Annual Required Contribution and which we wouldn’t know from Adam’s off ox, whatever that is.

It’s all accounting speak to us, but somehow that makes the news more rather than less troubling. It wraps the whole subject in a dense fog of fiscal lingo, leaving innocent readers like us to feel our way warily. Our conclusion: You could line up all the fiscal studies in the world, and they still wouldn’t reach an undisputed conclusion.

But here and there a bright light intrudes. Like a warning beacon. To mention one: The City of Little Rock designates a million dollars a year from its latest sales-tax increase to its pension plans. Gulp.

Then there is a comment made by Ben Thielemier, a spokesman for Little Rock’s municipal government. Defending city hall, he says the contribution to a couple of pension plans by local taxpayers has been overestimated and is actually much less than than the study claims.

At last contested report, both sides, ledgers drawn and green eyeshades in place, are still sticking with their competing figures.

The most accurate comment in this study out of Boston College may have been this one: “The data [in the report] have not been reviewed by the individual cities. This release is likely to provoke responses that will lead to further refinement of these estimates.” And how. The release of the study already has provoked a heated response from Little Rock’s city government.

So let the numbers games begin, or rather continue, in the hope they’ll eventually produce some light rather than just more heat. The more local taxpayers know about how much pension plans are costing them, the more aware they may be that the road to municipal bankruptcy can be paved with pension costs. See Stockton, California, and Detroit, Michigan.

It’s when pension plans and their costs aren’t examined, analyzed and debated but just accepted that they can be most dangerous to a city’s financial health.