Representatives of unions, retirees and state pension funds lined up Tuesday to criticize a bill to end guaranteed pensions for new public employees and replace them with something similar to 401(k) plans in the private sector.

The Maryland House GOP leadership is backing a package of bills that would steer the $40 billion system away from what they consider overly risky investments and lower the long-term assumptions of the retirement plan's earnings on its investments.

Mr. DiNapoli's office said in a statement that it had "serious concerns" about the governor's plan to allow municipalities to defer their pension costs, in part because of its potential impact on the funding level of the state pension system and the balance sheets of local governments.

Gov. Tom Corbett will "very likely" propose cutting future pension benefits for current school employees and state workers in the state budget plan he will present to lawmakers next week, his chief budget adviser said.

Illinois' already disastrous financial situation worsened as another credit rating agency downgraded its rating to the worst of any state in the country, blaming lawmakers' ongoing failure to resolve a multibillion-dollar pension crisis.

Of all the states, Illinois seems the most blatant example of state finances gone awry. Its ballooning pension system is to blame.

House Speaker Will Weatherford wants to eliminate pensions for all new employees and replace them with 401(k)-style accounts.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's plan to shift future rank-and-file state workers to a 401(k)-style retirement plan is unconstitutional because it didn't receive enough support from lawmakers, a judge ruled Thursday.

Gov. Corbett said Wednesday that he would not slash funding in his forthcoming budget for basic education or the four state-related universities, although that could change if there was no legislative giveback on reining in public-employee pension costs.

Moody's Credit Outlook gave upbeat credit marks to Florida after the Florida Supreme Court upheld 2011 legislation that required state employees to contribute 3 percent of their pay to help cover their pensions in the Florida Retirement System defined benefit plan and to eliminate the retirement cost-of-living adjustment.

There are persistent fiscal and demographic challenges in most states. The public sector workforce is aging as the baby boom cohort moves towards and into traditional retirement ages. Budgetary pressures at the state and local level make it difficult to increase plan funding and maintain the size of the public sector workforce.

To be fully funded, Delaware must increase its annual contribution to the pension system based on a market valuation of plan liabilities. This paper analyzes Delaware’s pension system on a fair-market or government- guaranteed basis, with reference to the average US Treasury rate on 10- and 20-year bonds in June 2012. A discussion of the discrepancy between current government accounting conventions and the fair-market value approach and the implications for plan management follows.

Wilshire Consulting estimates that the ratio of pension assets-to-liabilities, or funding ratio, for all 134 state pension plans was 73% in 2012, down from an estimated 77% in 2011. This deterioration in funding ratio was fueled by global stock market volatility in the twelve months ending June 30, 2012. Growth in fund assets could not keep up with growth in plan liabilities over fiscal 2012.

Was the slow recovery of the U.S. economy from the trough of the Great Recession anticipated? 

Alternative views on the problem the United States is facing: financing retirement consumption as its population ages.

Recent years have witnessed intense pension reform efforts in countries around the globe, often involving an increased use of funded pension programmes managed by the private sector. These funded arrangements are likely to play an increasingly important role in delivering retirement income in many countries and privately managed pension assets will play an increasing role in financial markets, notably as a source of long-term savings.

Published annually since 2005 by the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development  (OECD) Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, Pension Markets in Focus provides accurate, comprehensive, comparable and up-to-date statistics to help policy makers, regulators and market participants measure, compare and evaluate programme developments and country experiences globally.

Calculation of the increases in contributions required to achieve full funding of state and local pension
systems in the U.S. over 30 years. Without policy changes, contributions must increase by a factor of 2.5, reaching 14.1% of the total own-revenue generated by state and local governments.
This represents a tax increase of $1,385 per household per year.

New York taxpayers spend billions of dollars a year on health insurance coverage for retired state and local government employees, many of whom are too young to be eligible for Medicare. But the mounting "pay-as-you-go" bill for retiree healthcare is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Thanks to a new government accounting standard, the true cost of this long-term entitlement is finally emerging from the depths of state and local finances.

Unfunded employee pension obligations will present a serious fiscal problem to state and local governments in the not too distant future. This article takes a looks at the causes and potential cures for the public pension mess, mainly through the lens of legal doctrines that limit public employers' ability to avoid obligations.

Girard Miller's presentation at the National Conference of State Legislators in Chicago August 2012.

The goal is to enact systemic change and create a climate for long-term solvency for Kentucky's public pensions. This requires changing the very structure of the system while providing the minimum amount of one-time immediate funding to stave off bankruptcy in the state employees’ fund. Steps also must be taken to set in place policies that will enable the commonwealth to avoid such pension crises in the future.

There are three important lessons from the Wisconsin collective bargaining battles over the past eighteen months:

1. The power of the government-sector unions and their impact on elections is greatly overestimated. With the November 2012 victory for  Senate Republicans to regain control of the Wisconsin Senate,  government employee union  suffered their sixth  major defeat since March 2011.

2. When given a choice, government employees will quit their union in large numbers.

3. Government employees' salaries and benefits, particularly pensions, are financially unsustainable in most states and collective bargaining reform is needed.

The time for state and local governments to offer defined contribution retirement plans that protect both taxpayer dollars and public employee retirement security is now.

This paper examines the ongoing fiscal crisis caused by health-care plans for retirees (known as "other post-employment benefits," or OPEB) in one of the hardest-hit states, California, and outlines necessary reforms that should come before tax increases or cuts to government services.

In June 2012, nearly 70% of San Jose voters approved "Measure B" - a set of pension reforms that the City Council placed on the ballot after more than 8 months of negotiations with our employee unions.

In numerous measurable ways, North Carolina's pension benefits are more generous than those offered in the private sector and most other states. Financial and demographic trends point toward rapidly increasing obligations in the near- and long-term future. Sensible reforms that bring North Carolina's pension benefits more on par with those of other states and the private sector are needed to avoid a massive taxpayer bailout of the pension fund.

Public pensions at the state and municipal levels are unsustainable in their current form.  State Budget Solutions' recent study by Andrew Biggs found that public pensions are underfunded by $4.6 trilion. Here we offer solutions to the pension crisis

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%).

Sound pension reform meets four general criteria: (1) establish transparency with respect to the true cost of the benefits promised to public employees; (2) mandate that the pension plan sponsor pay the full cost of accrued benefits each year; (3) mandate that the pension plan sponsor pay down the unfunded accrued liability over a reasonable time horizon and (4) improve the generational equity, portability and security of benefits for public employees.

Paper suggesting Virginia move toward a combined retirement program that includes partially a defined benefits program and added to this should be a defined contributions program. Such a balanced system would make the Commonwealth’s costs lower and more predictable while providing attractive benefits to employees.