The Pew Center on the States released earlier this week "The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded State Retirement Systems and the Roads to Reform." It should have been called "The Road to Serfdom" like the Hayek classic.

According to the report, Maryland's "management of its long-term pension liability is cause for serious concern." It shows that Maryland's liabilities grew 77 percent from 1999 to 2008 while assets only grew 43 percent, a recipe for MUCH higher taxes.

Even worse, it shows that health care and other post employment benefit programs for state employees are not even 1 percent funded.

The kicker is that the study relies on data from the close of fiscal 2008, which means losses from the "great recession" are not included. "State Pension Funds Fall Off a Cliff" - a new report from ALEC - shows that in some plans, unfunded liabilities have almost doubled from a year ago as a result of the market crash. Pew chides states for their "lack of discipline," in the past for making promises to employees it had no way to pay for - but nothing has changed. And it won't this election year.

Here's the link to the Maryland fact sheet from Pew:

http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewcenteronthestatesorg/Initiatives/R_and_D/Trillion_Dollar_Gap_factsheets_Maryland.pdf

Here's the link to the ALEC report:

http://www.alec.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/State_Pension_Funds_Fall_Off_a_Cliff/ALEC_FINAL_pension_funds_split.pdf