From READINGEAGLE.COM:
…As of summer 2001, PSERS and the State Employee Retirement System, which covers state lawmakers and other state employees, were funded at better than 126 percent. That’s when the Legislature and then-Gov. Tom Ridge decided that taxpayers could afford to sweeten the state’s retirement pot by 25 percent to 50 percent….
Then came the dot-com bust, the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the stock market drop that followed…
Those in the state systems lost nothing. Their defined-benefit pension plans, considered contracts by the courts, were safe. Their employers – the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its public school districts – would have to make up for any investment losses…
State lawmakers, never eager to deliver bad news, decided to mask the fact that taxpayers were on the hook for the financial misfortunes of the state’s two big retirement funds… The two systems’ gains from the 1990s were spread over 10 years while the losses and boosts in benefits were spread out over 30 years…
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