Monster pension deficit

There's one very scary giant lurking out there and one of these days it's going to get us.
If that sounds like the stuff of a child's nightmare, that's no accident.
The giant pension shortfall that's about to hit throughout Pennsylvania will in many ways be worse than even the most frightening monster.
And if the specter of this monster is scary, we really got a shiver up our spine recently when we revisited the prescient comments of a former Hanover lawmaker in an Evening Sun editorial from 2001.
Steven Nickol, Hanover's state representative at the time, laid out a frightening scenario - frightening and accurate. He spoke to us just after legislators voted themselves a 50-percent increase in their pensions, a measure that also gave teachers a 25-percent hike in pensions.
Nickol, who was generally known to be one of the state House's experts on pension funding, had voted against the measure and literally pleaded with his colleagues to do the same. The pension increase was sold as including no additional cost to taxpayers - but that was guaranteed for only 10 years.
Nickol warned of the "11th-year surprise," and indeed that 11th year is shaping up to be a monster. Small wonder since the entire scheme counted on the pension fund earning an average of 8.5 percent each of those first 10 years, starting in 2001.
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