Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy on Monday called for pumping up payments into the State Employees Retirement System, one of the nation's most under-funded public pension funds.

The governor's plan attempts to address one of Connecticut's most dire long-term fiscal problems: a $10 billion pension fund that has less than half the funds it needs to pay retirees, and a payment plan that calls for decades of annual contributions of about $1 billion that balloon to $4.5 billion a year by 2032.

At a Hartford news conference, Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, proposed increasing the state's annual contributions by about $123 million a year to about $1.059 billion, fully funding the pension system in 20 years.

Mr. Malloy also wants to make it easier to appropriate the new funds from budget surpluses and other state revenue, by excluding some pension costs from the requirement of a three-fifths legislative majority to exceed the state spending cap.

"For more than 20 years, the state relied on a series of gimmicks to hide the fact that our finances were a mess," Mr. Malloy said.

"These tricks set us on a path that will require the state to contribute more than $4 billion in one fiscal year-four times our current payment-to fully fund the system if we stayed with the current plan," the governor said.

The proposed pension overhaul comes on the heels of a ratings downgrade by Moody's Investors Service Friday that cited Connecticut's high pension and debt costs, which eat about a fifth of the state's $20 billion budget.