Maryland Treasurer Nancy Kopp on Tuesday stressed the need to move away from a system that has chronically underfunded state pensions, a concern of credit-rating agencies that have given the state its coveted AAA bond rating.

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.

Gov. Martin O'Malley released a $37.3 billion state budget that for the first time since he took office more than six years ago would require no new taxes or significant cuts to finish the year in the black.

Maryland is still waiting to see what happens in Washington, as Congress wrestles with deep spending cuts in coming weeks. Federal budget cuts can have a big impact on the state, due to the state's proximity to the nation's capital.

Maryland is approaching a General Assembly session with good fiscal news: Neither tax increases nor drastic budget cuts are likely to be needed to balance the budget.

Politicians evade balanced budget requirements and debt limits by underfunding public pensions, covertly passing the financial burden onto future taxpayers. Get the details here.

A memo by the Maryland Department of Budget and Management noted that the sequestration process is expected to reduce federal funding to the state and local governments by about $150 million.

Improved revenues are expected to make the state budget process less painful.

A move in Maryland to shrink a large budget gap by shifting millions of dollars in pension costs to counties will help the state's credit quality, but could hurt local governments' financial health, Moody's Investors Service said.

Backed by Gov. O'Malley and Democrats, the $264 million tax package raises taxes and averts spending cuts.

Maryland Treasurer Nancy Kopp on Tuesday stressed the need to move away from a system that has chronically underfunded state pensions, a concern of credit-rating agencies that have given the state its coveted AAA bond rating.

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.

House Speaker Michael Busch says the idea is to make larger investments in schools and roads sooner rather than later in order to increase jobs in the state, while also taking advantage of low interest rates and competitive labor costs.  After that, lawmakers plan to slow the borrowing down.

Article saying Maryland should create a voluntary "buy back" program in which the state would pay cash to public workers who agree to forego some of their pension benefits. If structured correctly, and if many Maryland workers have preferences similar to their Prairie State counterparts, this program could significantly reduce state pension fund liabilities while giving workers the cash they want.

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.

Repairing Maryland's beleaguered state employee retirement system will require less reliance on pension benefits and more on defined contribution plans.Repairing Maryland's beleaguered state employee retirement system will require less reliance on pension benefits and more on defined contribution plans.

Maryland's state retirement system is underfunded by $33 billion as a result of overpromising benefits while underfunding obligations.

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.

Maryland lawmakers reached a compromise Thursday on a $32 billion budget that would cut a major source of funding for local road projects for the foreseeable future but would spare counties from beginning to share in the ballooning costs of teacher pension benefits.

The Maryland state Senate passed a $31.9-billion plan to shrink overall spending for the coming fiscal year once reductions in federal stimulus funding are factored in.

Time to add a new diagram to the state budget and policy playbook--your state's highest paid employee is probably a football or basketball coach.

The bombshell Oregon Medicaid study released this week should give all states pause as they consider plans to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. States must now ask what the point of Medicaid is in the first place. 

To help prevent union strong-arming that fleeces taxpayers, we should know precisely what public union officials are demanding and what government employers are offering in any collective negotiation about employment terms and conditions.

And it isn’t just individuals who must reconfigure budgets, the states are looking at smaller “paychecks” as well.

Just as state spending should identify performance outcomes, tax preferences should as well.

State and local politicians may think they can relax as third quarter tax revenues showed 12 consecutive quarters of growth year over year. But that would be a mistake in light of pension investments that again failed to erase any of more than $5 trillion owed to government workers.

This map looks at state government budgets - specifically, how much of each state's budget comes from the federal government. Mississippi tops the list with 49% of its general revenue coming from Washington; Alaska, by contrast, gets only 24% of its general revenue from the feds.

A National Insistute on Retirement Security brief on proposals to freeze local and state defined benefit pension plans in a shift to defined contribution plans that limit taxpayer risk ignores is what protections are needed against endemic public pension corruption and offers no explanation of who is going to sacrifice to pay this massive hidden debt.

The "State of the States" report released this week puts hidden state and local debt at $7.3 trillion, stating: "States do not account to citizens in ways that are transparent, timely or accessible." If state and local governments fail to act decisively now, cities, towns and counties will go bankrupt, and states could fall beyond a fiscal event horizon into perpetual debt.

The U.S. Census Bureau today released its Annual Survey of State Government Finances for 2011, and it shows the "revenue crisis" politicians have been blaming on the Great Recession is false.

From Fiscal Years 2007 through 2011, politicians and government pension fund managers blew all the money taxpayers and government workers contributed. All of the $611 billion that was supposed to be invested is gone. So is the $609 billion earned on investments. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Public Pensions: State-and-Locally-Administered Defined Benefit Data, more than $1.22 trillion came in to the pension plans and more than $1.29 trillion went out instead of growing to pay guaranteed future benefits. Those promised benefits grew by about $1 trillion over the same period. 

Members of a state and municipal workers organization recently got a dose of reality on pension reform at a gathering of public workers who have benefited from defined contribution plans for 40 years. A key fact from the presentations was stated by Ken Parker, city manager of Port Orange, Florida: "Note: the only way a governmental entity can truly fix its cost related to retirement is to change from a Defined Benefit Plan and adopt a Defined Contribution Plan."

Of all accounting frauds state leaders commit to push devastating costs onto future generations, the worst is deluding citizens about the security of so-called catastrophe insurance funds. Hurricane Sandy and a tsunami scare in Hawaii at the same time should be warning enough for governors to start paying the premiums.

When a "premier global consulting and actuarial" firm proves in its first Public Pension Funding study that those government pensions are doomed, it is past time for action. Milliman's study showing a 33 percent increase in pension debt over official numbers from a minute change in accounting should be enough to spur reform.

No matter what the Government Accounting Standards Board says or how grossly state and local politicians pervert new guidelines to continue looting workers' pension funds, reality will triumph when the real reckoning comes. Just ask the National Association of Bond Lawyers, municipal bond rating agencies and actuaries who do the calculations.

Anyone interested in the state and local government pension crisis - and all Americans should pay attention to this hidden $4.6 trillion hidden black hole in our economy - must read Alicia H. Munnell's new book, "State and Local Pensions: What now?" It is the best primer on this complex issue except for one missing factor: Reality.

When a widely recognized world pension expert refers to current defined benefit and defined contribution plans as "dysfunctional," it is time for politicians to stop their lying and denying that this fiscal catastrophe is spiraling out of control.

When State Budget Solutions started looking at real total state debt, just the staggering size of the numbers alone did not tell the whole story. So how to get a fix on the real burden taxpayers must bear in each state? Per capita is the usual way. But even that does not tell the whole story.

The worst news is that earnings on investments were a negative $14.2 billion, a $66 billion decline from the same quarter last year. These pension funds paid out $53.4 billion in the second quarter, putting a year-over-year hole of at least $68 billion in capacity to pay future benefits.

If current state and municipal workers and retirees refuse to accept their fair share of sacrifice on retirement benefits, the looming taxpayer backlash will sweep away a century of progress. Workers must act voluntarily now because politics and law never will resolve this crisis before the money runs out, and legal protections they are counting on may be as false as politicians' promises.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told Democratic faithful gathered at the national convention Tuesday that "Democratic governors are balancing budgets," when he knows that is a lie, especially in the Old Line State. Twenty Democratic governors account for about 53 percent of total state debt, according to a study released last week by State Budget Solutions.

Vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie put on cheery faces for the faithful this week at the Republic National convention, but both know the catastrophe states are hurtling toward because of hidden debt.

They just keep on letting politicians pick their pockets. Latest official public pension data - the most optimistic available -- compiled by Census show investments administered by states fell short more than $1.2 trillion even by their own trick accounting from Fiscal Year 2007 through 2011. Yet managers scraped off at least $45 billion in "Other Payments" to enrich a handful of insiders.

"Unsustainable" is the word state officials heard from experts for the first time at their annual National Conference of State Legislatures gathering here, where one of four sessions on the pension crisis drew a standing-room only crowd of more than 300.

When U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois tried to fire up a ballroom full of state legislators here Tuesday morning, he used the phrase "states rights." It popped up a few other times as the National Conference of State Legislatures met to its annual "Build Strong States" summit. The only problem: There is no such thing as "states rights."

We're going to pay enough for 2,000 "Curiosity" Mars rover missions, but the money will produce no government services or benefits of any kind. Yet, nowhere does a state legislative directive on pensions approved Tuesday mention how states are going to pay this debt.

National Conference of State Legislatures members meeting here ended their first day with even more bad news about municipal bonds, debt interest that takes more than 20 cents of every dollar they spend each year and that pays for essential public works, among other things.

The word "taxpayer" appears only 14 times in 165 pages of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Report on the Municipal Securities Market released Tuesday. Only two of those mentions in the body of the report refer to looking out for our interests.

Question: When does 80 percent of something equal 100 percent? Answer: Never, except in the fantasy world of public pension accounting. The American Academy of Actuaries Tuesday sent a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, puncturing that fantasy in a committee report he released six months ago.

Push past the spin. Most public workers covered by defined benefit pension plans - and taxpayers stuck with the tab - don't have to wait years to find out what's happening to their money. They can get quarterly reports from the Top 100 funds representing 89.4 percent of "financial activity."

If our states and municipalities were trauma victims, they would be bleeding out while doctors argued about injuries. Even as financial gurus Paul Volcker and Richard Ravitch studied the municipal and state fiscal crisis for a report released this week, public pension debt alone grew to an untreatable $4.6 trillion, according to analysis released Wednesday by economist Andrew Biggs for State Budget Solutions.

Anybody who doubts whether public pensions can push state and local governments beyond a fiscal event horizon into a black hole of perpetual debt should read an auditor's note in Montana's latest annual report: "The Unfunded Actuarial Accrued Liability amortization period is infinite ...."

It may be equally as worrisome to know that the Department of Labor is also engaging in the practice of publishing one set of rosier numbers, only to amend them to the real numbers days later, thereby avoiding dissemination of the worst numbers.

Public pensions just keep falling further and further behind. In fact, they have fallen so far they never can get up again. The local and state pension crisis got at least $300 billion worse in the first quarter of this year compared to 2011, according to analysis of latest data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That added at least $1.5 trillion to the shortfall -- calculated at $800 billion to more than $4 trillion as of 2010 -- future taxpayers must make up on top of all other taxes and rate hikes.

Despite the obvious need for maintaining these funds, many state lawmakers deplete or insufficiently fund the reserves to cover costs elsewhere, leaving constituents to fend for themselves during bouts of extreme weather.

Now, 70 percent equals 100 percent. The people crashing municipal and state pension plans into a bottomless fiscal abyss just released a "study" they claim finds them "solidly funded" despite irredeemable losses in the recession and lagging growth since. They did it by lowering their standards. No problem, they expect taxpayers to make up the difference.

Maybe average Wisconsin voters didn't consciously know each household must pay $1,563 in extra taxes every year for the next 30 years just to fund public pension shortfalls. But they probably realized they don't have a pension anymore, even if they have jobs. And any lucky enough to have jobs know that before Scott Walker became governor, they were paying higher taxes while working harder and longer at lower pay with slashed benefits.

Politicians are forcing public pensions to take more risks with taxpayer money and public workers' retirements. Recent accounting reforms actually will make the crisis worse, according to a study just released by three economists. They call for "drastic reform." Congress actually has the power to impose something drastic now.

This all boils down to who gets to pick taxpayers' pockets first, public pensioners or municipal bond investors? More people are waking up to the hard reality that when it comes to state and local government, somebody has to lose money over the next few decades. The National Association of Bond Lawyers is worried enough about it to issue "Considerations" for advising clients who think they're getting safe investments.

Despite an organized campaign to stop public pension reform, reality is beginning to break through.  One recent report outlines a possible path to long-term solutions and another details the necessity of states and municipalities finding their own way because federal bailout is impossible.  And Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a plan that could have been based on both reports.

Hey, young public employees, what are you going to do when your pension checks bounce after you paid in for decades? That is what will happen in many - maybe all - states and municipalities sooner or later if they do not reform right now. If you want to see the future, just look at Illinois. One citizen there did, and came up with a real reform plan that might work.

Public employees should take their pension money now and run to avoid risk of getting reduced benefits - or nothing - in the future. It's the best deal for them and for taxpayers. A growing chorus of credible voices including the Government Accountability Office, a Federal Reserve bank and now the Harvard Kennedy School Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government confirm state and local government finances are "spiraling out of control" and even draconian reforms only make it "more likely" that future benefits will paid in full.

In what universe would $500 million in cuts from a $35.4 billion budget be a doomsday scenario? Perhaps for Democratic lawmakers set on raising taxes again, the failure of their bill was a disappointment - but the end of the world? Hardly.

Hey, young public employees, what are you going to do when your pension checks bounce after you paid in for decades? That is what will happen in many - maybe all - states and municipalities sooner or later if they do not reform right now. If you want to see the future, just look at Illinois. One citizen there did, and came up with a real reform plan that might work.

While state lawmakers grapple with spending issues in special sessions, the state is hemorrhaging money paying for lawmakers' overtime.

This is what it sounds like when the Federal Reserve Bank screams: "Much has been written about the various headwinds restraining economic activity over the near term. However, our economy also has other headwinds to confront over the medium- to-longer-term. ... the finances of some state and local governments are also under stress and in need of serious adjustments."  - Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Sandra Pianalto

States are taking action to prepare for possible downgrades and future revenue cuts by proposing possible solutions now. But which plan is the best plan?

Often referred to as the "Death Tax," the federal government imposes a tax on the estate of deceased individuals regardless of the means of transfer. Many states initially jumped on the bandwagon and began taxing "unrealized" wealth, but more recently, some states are turning their backs on estate taxation or tweaking it in next coming years.

Will Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton join the rest of us living in reality? So far, it's not looking good.

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.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton's move to raise the state income tax to be the highest in the nation ignores the fact that recent similar efforts have not been successful.

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.

Fiscal stress and strain continues in the fifty states this week as more legislators look for ways out of the black holes in which they find themselves. Solutions sought by states include delayed retirement, increased pension contributions, and furloughs.