March 3, 2019

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Health March 3, 2019

Governments Struggle To Find A Way To Pay Retirement Pension Bills

There’s a growing fiscal crisis hitting cities, counties and states across the U.S. It’s all about generous retiree health benefits that historically haven’t been fully funded.



MICHELE MARTIN, HOST:

Across the United States, there is a growing problem for current and retired government employees. It has to do with retiree packages known as other postemployment benefits. They’ve been around for decades, but they are often chronically underfunded. And now with the retirement of more baby boomers, it’s time to pay up. Houston Public Media’s Andrew Schneider reports on how one city is trying to head off a financial crisis.

ANDREW SCHNEIDER, BYLINE: Any city council meeting can be boring, especially when it’s about finances. But in Houston, those meetings and what they’re wrestling with have forced people to sit up and take notice.

DAVID BERGER: Our initial $2.4 billion liability has been mentioned, but we projected it out over the next 30 years, and it became $9 billion.

SCHNEIDER: David Berger of Segal Consulting talked about the bleak financial outlook for Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city. He says that $9 billion projected shortfall is a real problem.

BERGER: That would increase far faster than your revenues, your tax revenues. And so that kind of highlights the need for, not only a current solution, but a longer term. What can we do to control the longer term costs as well?

SCHNEIDER: Houston is far from alone. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has been looking at this issue. In 2016, it found that cities counties and states collectively are short more than $860 billion.

ALICIA MUNNELL: The problem is nationwide. The seriousness of the problem varies a lot.

SCHNEIDER: Alicia Munnell is the center’s director. Historically, governments have always underfunded pensions and retiree benefits. But it’s not been until the last few years that federal accounting rules forced them to admit the shortfalls. And Munnell says some states are really struggling.

MUNNELL: I’m not going to surprise you very much. Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, those are the plans where you see the most serious shortfalls and where you have, you know, high debt service and high retiree health care costs as well.

SCHNEIDER: In terms of local governments, she points to counties in California and cities like Chicago and Detroit. And then there’s Houston. It’s proposing some drastic measures to keep retiree benefits from mushrooming into another crisis. Councilman Dave Martin says they’re looking into eliminating some spousal subsidies depending on longevity.

DAVE MARTIN: We have some retirees that are marrying younger men and women – for instance, a 50-year-old man marries a 30-year-old woman or a 50-year-old woman marries a 30-year-old man. The obligation in the retirement goes with the younger spouse.

SCHNEIDER: Houston officials are worried that some of these changes, which include no postretirement health coverage for new employees, could make it more difficult to attract workers to the city. Bill Fulton directs the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Fulton says unfunded retiree benefits could lead to the same problems for cities that had unfunded pensions.

BILL FULTON: Where we’ve seen bankruptcies so far have been purely a pension problem. That was the problem in Detroit. I do think that we – there will be – I can’t say which ones – but I do think probably some jurisdictions will be at similar financial risk as postemployment benefits become a bigger issue and become more expensive.

SCHNEIDER: It’s a painful choice to make because when the benefits get more expensive, something else in the budget doesn’t get funded. The Houston City Council is expected to vote on the proposal to overhaul retiree benefits soon. For NPR News, I’m Andrew Schneider in Houston.

(SOUNDBITE OF HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE’S “BALLICKI BONE”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Sports March 3, 2019

Jon Champion On Calling Play-By-Play Soccer

Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with renowned British soccer commentator Jon Champion, who is joining ESPN as the new play-by-play voice for Major League Soccer.



LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

For almost two decades, Jon Champion has called the play-by-play on some of the most watched soccer games in the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JON CHAMPION: Trying to run Georginio, making a great job of it. Solo away. What a fabulous goal lighting up Wembley.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: From the Premier League to FIFA games to the World Cup and Olympic Games. Now Champion is taking his family and moving across the pond to the U.S. to cover Major League Soccer for ESPN and, as he puts it, to live the American dream. Jon Champion, welcome to WEEKEND EDITION and to the United States (laughter).

CHAMPION: Thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What brings you to our shores?

CHAMPION: I think a challenge and an opportunity to have an adventure, both on a personal and a professional level. So as you rightly pointed out, I’ve been commentating on soccer matches for 34 years now. I started when I was at university as a teenager. But you do get to a stage where you’re recognizing that you’re covering an event or a storyline for the fifth, sixth, seventh, maybe eighth time. And I just got to the stage where, in 2014, ESPN hired me to cover the World Cup in Brazil. And off the back of that, the suggestion was made that maybe I’d like to consider, at some point, coming and making my home here and commentating full time on American soccer rather than European or, specifically, British soccer. And that was the gestation, really, of an idea that took four years to grow into a fully fledged offer to come in and work here full time.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you have to remind yourself to call it soccer, though?

CHAMPION: I do at the moment. I do and…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) I can just imagine, I’m afraid, you slipping up because, obviously, the rest of the world does not call it soccer.

CHAMPION: No, no, no. It is football around the rest of the world, and I’m in the midst of the penalty or PK debate. What do I call a penalty kick?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).

CHAMPION: So I’m somewhere betwixt and between. I’m mid-Atlantic at the moment.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) All right. U.S. soccer is gaining in popularity, but it is definitely not at the level of the Premier League or other leagues around the world. You’ll be calling matches for a sport that is not watched by everyone, as it was back home. How do you feel about that? What is your plan to bring soccer to everyone’s living room?

CHAMPION: Well, I’m not sure…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You’re responsible for this alone, by the way.

CHAMPION: Personally?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, absolutely.

CHAMPION: Oh, that is…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I’m going to put it all on you.

(LAUGHTER)

CHAMPION: I mean, I’m fortunate in that my voice is associated with big, worldwide soccer events. So if my voice becomes associated with big, American soccer events, there is a school of thought that that helps to add a certain validity to the occasion and to the broadcast. Now, whether that’s the case is probably not for me to say, but that is the suggestion and the theory behind this.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But why do you think it hasn’t really caught on here in America the same way? Because kids do it. You have soccer clubs all over the United States. Kids grow up playing soccer. And then, it kind of just stops.

CHAMPION: Yeah. It does at the moment, or it has done up until this point. And it is the most played sport in that age group. For teenagers, soccer is the No. 1 participation event. And, gradually, that is translating into a greater interest in the professional game of soccer in this country. So one of the attractions of this job coming now, for me, is that if you look at the context of league soccer in this country, it began, effectively, in 1996. So this is season number 24 that begins over this weekend. If you translate that into the English game, league soccer there started in 1888. So, in the same terms, we’re in 1911 now, here in America. So…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We’re a young country in many ways (laughter).

CHAMPION: Yeah. But it means that it is an evolution. And, obviously, the American game is at a very early stage of that evolution. But I think the graph shows that the acceleration in interest in the game – it’s gathering pace. It’s quite attractive to come and be a little part of trying to tell the story of a growth of a sport that’s conquered the world with one exception, and we’re sitting right in the middle of that exception. And I’d love to play a very, very small role and be a close observer of the breakthrough of soccer. I’m not suggesting that it’s going to displace the NFL, but it is capable of nibbling at the heels, perhaps, of baseball and of ice hockey, certainly. It’s very exciting to be at the stage of one’s career where one’s been lucky enough to do most things, but this is an unconquered frontier.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jon Champion, longtime British soccer commentator and now ESPN’s lead announcer for Major League Soccer, thank you very much.

CHAMPION: It’s been a great joy. Thank you.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business March 3, 2019

For The Few Who Heat Homes With Coal, It's Still King

John Ord of Susquehanna, Pa., loads 40-pound bags of anthracite coal into his car. He’s among the fewer than 130,000 households left in the United States that burn coal to heat their homes.

Jeff Brady/NPR


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Every few weeks, John Ord does something unusual for most people living in 2019 — he stops by a local hardware store in rural northeastern Pennsylvania to buy coal to heat his home.

He recently spent about $56 to buy 400 pounds of coal. That will keep his 2,400-square-foot house a toasty 70 to 72 degrees for a couple of weeks.

“This is the whole glamorous part, right here,” says Ord, as he loads 40-pound bags of Pennsylvania anthracite coal into the back of his white station wagon.

When he gets home, Ord lugs the coal down to his basement, where he rips open a bag, lifts it chest high and loads it into a hopper on the back of his coal-burning stove.

It’s a lot more work than most Americans with gas or electric heat go through to keep their homes warm. They can just set a thermostat and forget it. But Ord says this is actually less work than the wood stove he replaced last fall.

Ord loads a hopper on the back of his coal-burning stove. He says 400 pounds of coal will keep his 2,400-square-foot house between 70 and 72 degrees for a couple of weeks in the winter.

Jeff Brady/NPR


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“Between cutting it [wood], stacking it, letting it season, moving it into the space where you need to access it and then loading the stove,” Ord says, wood requires a lot more handling.

Ord’s coal-burning stove burns 24 hours a day when it’s cold. He likes the constant heat it gives off and says it’s cheaper than his other options — oil and electric.

While most power plants around the United States burn bituminous coal, northeastern Pennsylvania is very proud of its anthracite coal, which is shinier and harder than you might expect. Ord says it burns cleaner too.

Anthracite coal is mined in northeastern Pennsylvania. About 63,000 households in the state burn coal for heat.

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To demonstrate this, he goes outside and points up to a white chimney. “No smoke at all. There’s no smell to it,” says Ord.

But burning anthracite coal does emit more carbon dioxide per unit of heat than just about any other fuel, according to the Energy Information Administration. That makes it a contributor to climate change.

Anthracite backers point out that it has less sulfur than bituminous coal, but environmentalists say cleaner does not mean clean.

“It still emits quite a bit of dangerous sulfur dioxide, as well as heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury,” says Tom Schuster with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. He says anyone concerned about their contribution to climate change should avoid burning coal for heat.

Those in the anthracite coal business counter that the industry is so small that it’s not a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

“If you want to look at the major CO2 producers in the world, it’s not us,” says Matt Atkinson, co-owner of Leisure Line Stove Company in Berwick, Pa. “And even if we quadrupled our current sales, it still wouldn’t be a problem.”

Seeking a new generation of customers

There was a time when coal was king in the home-heating business. In 1940, more than half of U.S. homes burned coal, according to the Census Bureau. It was a big business and such a part of the culture that coal company ads were heard regularly on the radio.

Listen to a 1953 Blue Coal radio advertisement here:

(Credit: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission/Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum)

After decades of decline, fewer than 130,000 households use coal for heat today. Half of them are in Pennsylvania, and the state’s coal industry wants to boost that. It has a plan to attract more customers.

Atkinson is among those leading the campaign. He bought Leisure Line with a business partner in 2009 and says he got into the coal stove business after experiencing a friend’s stove.

Matt Atkinson, co-owner of Leisure Line Stove Company, in the firm’s Berwick, Pa., factory. His company hopes to encourage more people to switch to burning anthracite coal to heat their homes.

Jeff Brady/NPR


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Jeff Brady/NPR

“When I opened the door, I felt this warmth that I had never felt before. … And I was hooked instantly,” says Atkinson. Talk to coal-heat advocates in Pennsylvania, and you’ll hear this repeatedly — that there’s no heat as intense as coal heat.

It’s clear that many people in northeastern Pennsylvania, the heart of anthracite coal country, have an emotional attachment to this fossil fuel.

“You have people here that their great-great-grandfathers were miners. Their grandfathers were miners. It’s a family of mining,” says Andrew Meyers, sales manager for Blaschak Coal Corp. His company also is leading the campaign to attract new customers.

“It’s mostly about growing market share within the home-heating industry,” says Atkinson. He hopes to attract a new generation of customers with the message that they can save money on heating their home if they choose coal.

Kelly Brown stands in front of a pile of coal. Her family’s business, F.M. Brown’s Sons, has sold coal for nearly a century.

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In Reading, Pa., Kelly Brown welcomes the campaign. Her family’s business, F.M. Brown’s Sons, has sold coal for nearly a century and is one of the few to survive the industry’s decline.

“In this general area, there was probably about 50 coal companies. Slowly, one by one, they started closing up,” says Brown. Now her company is the only one left in Berks County.

She says the industry has improved its environmental record over the years. Pennsylvania was the first state to pass an act to address abandoned-mine reclamation, and today coal companies like to tout their work in this area.

Given Pennsylvania’s abundant coal reserves and a bigger focus on improving coal’s environmental record, Brown hopes the industry will stage a comeback. “I might not see it in my lifetime, but I think things will turn around,” she says.

So far the trend is not moving in Brown’s favor. Even in Pennsylvania, the number of households using coal for heat continues a steady decline.

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