Reality is closing in on public pension liars and deniers trying to keep docile government workers and taxpayers in the dark about how catastrophic our public pension crisis actually is. Politicians' false promises guarantee huge tax hikes and draconian government service cuts for decades, but one public pension expert thinks "Pension benefits are a component of compensation not best determined by the people."

Illinois' multibillion-dollar pile of unpaid bills will quadruple within five years unless steps are taken to curtail state pension and Medicaid spending, a government watchdog concluded Monday in a new analysis of the state's budget.

The Democratic governor said he's willing to take on the ailing program in a year when every seat in the Legislature is up for election because the state's contribution to five retirement plans is eating up more and more of the state budget.

For pension reformers in Texas and across the country, Rhode Island was just a matter of time and a bellwether.

Proposal for reforming Maine's pension plans, including freezing pensions for three years (2011 - 2013), identical to the state employee salary freeze, and ensuring reasonable increases in pensions after that, close to the historical norm of 2.8% annually, based on CPI (inflation), but capped at 2% (currently capped at 4%).

Opening up the NDPERS's defined-contribution (DC) plan to all workers would have a dramatic impact on the system's bottom line. A DC plan, similar to a 401k plan, would allow the employees and the employer to contribute a defined amount of salaries and wages - say, the current 8.12% - but the state would not have to worry about ensuring the viability of the system.

The New Hampshire Retirement System has a $3.7 billion unfunded liability and lawmakers are considering a shift to a defined contribution system similar to private sector 401k programs.

Brown will propose benefits for new state workers that combine elements of traditional pensions with a 401(k)-style savings plan. He says the state can no longer afford its current retirement system.

The $14 billion Kentucky Retirement Systems, which covers 324,000 state and local government workers, expected a 7.75 percent rate of return but earned only 5.51 percent over the past 10 years.

In an address to the General Assembly Gov. Lincoln Chafee and Treasurer Gina Raimondo called for a new approach that would raise retirement ages, halt automatic cost-of-living pension increases and create a hybrid retirement system that combines traditional pensions with 401(k)-style accounts.

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, who left the Republican Party last year to run as an independent, is joining New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in seeking to roll back benefits promised to government retirees.

The Democratic-led Legislature needs to reel in government pensions on its own during the upcoming fall veto session and not expect any financial lifeline from Washington, a group of leading congressional Republicans said in a letter to the four legislative leaders and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Some lawmakers and pension officials are pushing to abandon the roughly 8% annual-return assumption set by many public-employee funds, saying the rate is unrealistically high given upheaval in markets around the world and the preceding financial crisis.

Based on the correlation between broad equity market indices and the changes in state and local pension assets, a reasonable estimate is that pension fund assets today are higher by about 14.5% than they were in June 2009.

Two scholars say that Minnsotans may have to pay another $2,000 per household in taxes, just to make good on promises made to public pensions.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration plans to save the state money by requiring unionized state workers to take at least four unpaid furlough days off and by introducing legislation requiring them to contribute to their defined benefit retirement plans if they want to keep them.

Tetiree health insurance is costing Rhode Island taxpayers millions of dollars a year, and with the state now into the second year of a long-term plan to build up a pension-like trust fund to pay for retiree health care, the state budget office is seeking an update on where those costs are going.

More than 4,100 legislators in 33 states are positioned to benefit from special retirement laws that they and their predecessors have enacted to boost their pensions by up to $100,000 a year, a USA TODAY investigation found.

It would take South Carolina more than 60 years to cover the $17 billion hole if all state workers retired at the same time. That won't happen, but 60 years is twice the length of time recommended by government accounting standards.

Plan cuts benefits, $5 billion in costs.

Why do state and municipal workers cling to those who betray them?
Here's an answer: The few getting rich off this scam use accounting tricks to lie about how deep the public pension crisis really is.

We would all like to live well in our Golden Years, but should the taxpayer be on the hook for 85% of the highest (five) earning years, without regard to how much employees contributed, the financial status of the fund or the fact that retirees (should) have lower expenses than the plans currently assume?

Governments are slowly coming to grips with the problems created by running their pension systems with pie-in-the-sky investment returns. Unfortunately, most still haven't.

Washington state pensions are in worse shape than state officials would have citizens believe. Andrew G. Biggs writes that the largest failing of the state's current pension system is the nature of elected leaders to make benefit promises without paying for them.

Reckless granting of benefits and gross mismanagement of public pension funds threaten the very existence of many states and municipalities while indenturing a generation of taxpayers.  

Happy Fourth of July, beleaguered taxpayers. Get out your checkbooks to start paying trillions of dollars for public worker retirement benefits. The secret debt politicians and union bosses ran up is so huge there is no way out but massive service cuts and tax increases already passed without our consent.

Pensions are a bi-partisan problem; it will take a bi-partisan investment of serious political capital to change course in Minnesota.

Illinois, unable to marshal the political will to set aside money for workers' pensions, keeps doing nothing, apparently hoping the pension mess will fix itself. But that never happens, of course. Instead, it just gets worse.

While some states are attempting to reform lavish pension plans, others are  still playing games with state finances.

Despite pension fund investment gains in 2010, taxpayers still owe state and municipal workers trillions of dollars for promised benefits no matter how much funds earn during the next 30 years.

The state's huge unfunded pension liability cannot be addressed effectively without changes for current employees. But the changes being proposed are hardly draconian or unfair.

In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York’s operating budget. Unless those costs are reined in, New York will find itself unable to provide even essential services.

With pension liabilities and health care benefits out of control and unions asking for more, states are finally taking action. Here's a look at some of the effort-within and beyond Wisconsin-that are underway.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's pursuit of reform in public employee compensation incited a vitriolic response from public unions and a de facto boycott by the Democrats in the state legislature. Amidst the political drama and the flashing headlines, there are lessons to be learned.

Now, when nearly every state is tottering on the edge of a fiscal cliff as they try to balance their budgets, public sector workers are being forced to shoulder a share of the financial burden.

Someone should tell the unions (in Wisconsin, at least) that there is a new sheriff in town.  And he's not afraid to call in the National Guard to quell unrest among state employees.

Lame duck Chicago Mayor Richard Daley prefers a less steep, and less complete, solution to the pension problem than that in proposed legislation.  He wants 50 years to get the police and fire pension funds to a point where they have assets to cover 80 percent of their outstanding liabilities.

If the state does nothing more than adhere to the commission's current recommendations, we certainly will find ourselves here again: asking public servants for more concessions and taxpayers for more support.

Ignoring the pension problem will only send states' budgets on a faster downward spiral toward bankruptcy and increase the likelihood that federal taxpayers will get stuck with the bill for benefits that are not only unaffordable but also far more generous than those enjoyed by most workers in the private sector who ultimately pay for them.

Years of irresponsible funding for pensions, entitlements, and other government programs have created a state budget crisis of unprecedented scale. Nearly every state faces grave challenges in meeting their financial obligations for at least the third year in a row. While some states are "just" struggling to balance budgets and shore up shortfalls in an official sense, others are running out of money to make basic payments. Something's got to give. Change is coming, one way or another.

Today, State Budget Solutions (SBS), a nonprofit organization advocating for fundamental reform of state budgets, released an open letter to all governors urging them to follow General Motors' lead and freeze defined benefit pensions for all employees.

The Platt Institute hosts SBS President, Bob Williams, to disucss state pension solutions.

Andrew Biggs will discuss the findings of his paper, which asserts that Washington state's unfunded pension liability is greater than $50 billion, or more than $20,000 per household, and Matt Smith will speak about what he believes to be the most salient points people need to understand about pensions. Bob Williams will wrap up the meeting by discussing national pension issues and how they affect Washington state.

Governor Cuomo is taking a first essential step in reforming pensions, but it falls short of fundamental reform because it does not include any structural change. We urge him to go further and adopted a defined contribution pension model for all public employees.

State Budget Solutions, the nation's top state budget education and watchdog group, presented the "Reality Check" award to the state of Utah for its innovative use of a "reality based budgeting" process for state pensions that makes the state more fiscally responsible and financially sound. State Budget Solutions awarded Utah State Senator Dan Liljenquist the "Real Leader Award" for his successful efforts in spearheading the shift toward a defined contribution pension plan. 

Please join the conference call presenting Sen. Dan Liljenquist with the Real Leader Award on Thurs., June 2 at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time. 

The nation's top state budget watchdog, State Budget Solutions, released a report on this week demonstrating the dramatic extent of unfunded liabilities facing the state government public employee pension funds- ranging from half a trillion to $2.8 trillion dollars depending on the study used in the analysis.

Reality based budgeting expert puts "real" PA budget debt at $100 billion