CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Undisclosed Pension Extras Cost Detroit Billions. “Detroit’s municipal pension fund made undisclosed payments for decades to retirees, active workers and others above and beyond normal benefits, costing the struggling city billions of dollars, according to an outside actuary hired to examine the payments. . . . Detroit has nearly 12,000 retired general workers, who last year received pensions of $19,213 a year on average— hardly enough to drive a great American city into bankruptcy. But the total excess payments in some years ran to more than $100 million, a crushing expense for a city in steep decline. In some years, the outside actuary found, Detroit poured more than twice the amount into the pension fund that it would have had to contribute had it only paid the specified pension benefits. And even then, the city’s contributions were not enough.”