It wasn't intended as a long-term investment, but the state Employees' Retirement System looks like it will own two Maui golf courses for more than a decade after a recent bid from a buyer fell through.

The Chicago-based Civic Federation said Tuesday the funding gap for 10 Chicago-area public pension systems widened by 16.7 percent to $32 billion in fiscal 2011 from the year, warning of service cuts or tax hikes to bridge the gap.

Since South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis took office more than two years ago and has made it his mission to overhaul the state investment commission that oversees the state's pension fund.

"There's nothing more that government can do to help jobs and economic growth than for the Legislature to put a comprehensive public pension bill on my desk by the end of this month," Gov. Pat Quinn said.

According to the report, it's unreasonable for public pension plans to assume an 8-percent rate of return when many economists project lower returns in the future.

A plan to gradually shift ongoing pension costs to state universities and community colleges surfaced in the Illinois House Thursday and could be the model for shifting pension costs for K-12 schools.

Dissatisfied with state pension reforms enacted last year that affect 1.8 million current and former government workers, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel says without more changes "there will be nothing left at the end of the rainbow" when public employees retire.

Gov. Mary Fallin wanted to consolidate Oklahoma's half-dozen employee pension funds, but did not happen this year.

For the first time in recent years, New York state's pension fund exceeded its target rate of return, but E.J. McMahon, an analyst with the conservative Empire Center, cautioned that worse-than-targeted performance in recent years means the fund lost out on gains it should have booked.

Illinois got a good deal on a $300 million bond sale today, illustrating what happens when the Chicago economy and not the state's pension obligations drive how investors look at the state's creditworthiness.

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.

If public pension fund assets were indexed to relevant markets rather than actively managed, the public pension systems in Maryland and across the united States would save enormous amounts of money on fees, without undue harm to investment performance.

This report objectively measures and ranks states according to the operation and relative disposition of the pension plans in the 50 states and suggests ways that statefacing problems with their pension systems might go about solving these problems.

This study examines different measures of historical and current funding shortfalls in state pension plans. Two case studies are examined in greater depth to explore some fatal flaws that have caused funding crises in these plans: Public Employee Retirement Association of Colorado (PERA) and the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System (KPERS).

The primary benefit to society of a greater reliance on defined contribution plans is that individuals would be more directly responsible for their own retirement funds, as opposed to relying on taxpayers for support. Public employees are as capable as the rest of the working public to provide for their retirements.

North Carolina should limit non-voter-approved debt. Any further borrowing by the state should be subject to voter approval. It should also reform state employee pensions by moving to more portable and flexible benefits, such as a 401(k). State government should set aside reserves to cover future health care costs for retired state employees. Health Savings Accounts would be one solution and will remain an option at least until 2018, when the state will need to meet federal health insurance regulations.

Paper proposing 10 reforms that would facilitate funding the South Carolina Retirement System at 100 percent, keeping it solvent beyond 2024. The first nine ideas would streamline the existing system and provide for greater transparency. Adopting these reforms would not require a major overhaul of the existing plan. Reform # 10 looks to long-term changes that must be made to sustain the state’s retirement system.

Washington State Treasurer Jim McIntire has learned some lessons from the fast and loose Wall Street accounting that plunged the country into recession - he's learned to obfuscate and mislead. When current and prospective bond holders look to Treasurer McIntire to understand the condition of the state's pension fund, they'd best beware.

Treasurer McIntire appears to be going beyond simple carelessness or cleverness. Treasurer McIntire is leading bond holders to believe the State Actuary's grim Risk Assessment fully reflects the condition of the pension fund. In fact, the situation is much worse. And Treasurer McIntire knows it.

This paper reviews Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System and Michigan State Employees’ Retirement System pension and retiree medical benefits and confirms many of the published concerns related to the level of benefits provided and the associated fiscal challenges facing Michigan taxpayers in both the short and long term.

Defined contributions are a potential solution to states' unsustainable pension liabilities.

Video of Bob Williams addressing the underfunded state pension fund problem facing so many states.  He states that the public cannot afford the benefits and suggests defined contribution programs as a solution.