When the police found the body of the town’s 58-year-old retired fire marshal, the lights had been turned off in his house and he had no running water. He had no money to pay his bills and he was too proud to accept help from his neighbors. Perhaps because he was so proud, the New York Times was polite enough not to use the fire marshal’s name in their account of his death.

Welcome to Pritchard, Ala., where the public employee pension checks just stopped coming. As the Times reported last week, leaders of the city on the outskirts of Mobile had known since 2004 the pension fund was scheduled to run dry last year.