States should be required to fund them adequately. For a long time, states pretended money was not needed. Soon states are going to be sorry for not funding them properly. Seems the only workers that are going to guarantee their pensions fully intact will be the post office but they are having to painfully do it but at least the money will be there. Others with pensions will always be a political pawn. I know some whose pensions have been cut in half. How fair is that? And who know by the time they are elderly, they may have nothing. It sucks!

When I was employed the Employee Retirement System was funded at about 90% (27 years out of 30), but as of 2011 it is 83% funded. That is still far better than most states though.

in the 1970's, that state and municipal pensions were underfunded and would eventually be a huge problem. Naturally, no one in a position to do anything about properly funding the pensions bothered.

Unfortunately, what's happening here is what happened to so many company pensions a decade or so ago. I'm one of those. I worked for USAirways for ten years and was vested in the pension before I left the job in 1979. Fortunately, I never counted on that pension to be worth much of anything, and that's good because what I am now receiving is approximately a third of what it should be. It's far worse for those who worked up to retirement age and included original pension estimates in their planning.