Legislators in both the state House and Senate got the pension reform bill they were asking for on Monday, when fast-tracked legislation sent to Gov. Tom Wolf received the governor’s signature and became law.

The bill isn’t a cure-all for Pennsylvania’s pension woes. It does nothing to address the billions in costs stressing the state’s budget and being borne by local school districts as well. But it does take important steps to revise the way the state’s two largest public pension plans — SERS and PSERS — are structured and, critically, shields taxpayers from the risk of future cost explosions.

The keystone of the reform is a shift from a pure defined benefits plan to three 401(k)-style plans that all employees hired in 2019 and beyond will have to choose between. It’s a common sense move that mirrors the way pensions work for most Americans in the private sector, and should have been taken years ago — hardly the “historic” reform some legislators have made it out to be.

For all its common sense, the reform remains largely ineffective in the short term. Pennsylvania’s pension problem comes from $76 billion worth of underfunded pension obligations between SERS and PSERS right now. The Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office projects that the bill will save just $1.4 billion over the next three decades.

“Symbolic” — not “historic” — should probably be the adjective state officials deploy when talking about this bill. And while we’re talking about symbolic moves, there’s another thing every incumbent elected official that will be in office come 2019 can, and should, pledge right now to do.

They should all — representatives, senators, judges, and Row officers — pledge to buy into one of the 401(k)-style plans on Jan. 1, 2019. That’s the start of a three-month-long window where all current state employees will have to decide whether they want to remain in the defined benefits plan they currently have, or move into the hybrid system with newly-hired state employees.

Not every elected official in Pennsylvania accepts a public pension, but for those that do, the imperative could not be more clear. If this is a good thing for the commonwealth’s long term fiscal health (it is) and it’s good enough for new state employees (it should be), then it’s good enough for the people who wrote, debated and ultimately approved the system’s overhaul.