The approaching retirement of numerous state legislators, including two powerful Republican Senate leaders defeated in last month's primary elections, should focus attention on the generous pension benefits lawmakers have given themselves and other state employees.

A recent article in the Centre Daily Times, of State College, features one lawmaker, state Rep. Lynn Herman, who will leave office at the end of this year, after serving 24 years. At retirement, he will be eligible for a pension of $54,462 a year and free health insurance for life. Voters, angry over his support for the controversial pay-raise vote of July 2005, defeated Herman, who will celebrate his 50th birthday two months prior to his retirement.

The pension that Herman and scores of other retiring lawmakers will be receiving was dramatically enhanced with the May 2001 passage of Act 9.

A seemingly benign, arcane adjustment to lawmakers' pension formula multiplier resulted in a 50 percent pension increase for legislators. A lesser, but still generous, 25 percent increase followed for all other state workers, including public school teachers.

But in passing Act 9, lawmakers created what some actuaries are now describing as a financial time bomb, set to explode several years from now.

Lawmakers embraced greed and rejected both financial prudence and concern for taxpayers in giving themselves the 50 percent pension increase.

The so-called "pension grab" of 2001 rivals last summer's controversial "pay grab" in terms of revealing most lawmakers' self-serving priorities. And, to make matters worse, in the case of the pension grab, the timing could not have been worse.

The stock market boom of the late 1900s had produced a string of record investment returns. And when state lawmakers noticed a significant surplus in the pension investment accounts, they decided to take the money rather than allow it to remain as a cushion against future stock market downturns. Soon after lawmakers grabbed the pension surplus, the stock market collapsed. Since that time, Wall Street has seen some better investment returns, but lawmakers' pension grab of early 2001 will still prove very costly to taxpayers.

The Act 9 pension boost should generate the same kind of voter outrage and anger as did the 2 a.m. pay-raise vote of July 7, 2005. In fact, the financial impact of the pension grab should have voters much more angry than the pay-raise vote.

In the case of the pension boost, state taxpayers (including school district property tax payers) are obligated to hand over billions of dollars to make lawmakers' and other state workers' retirement years rosier.

To add a small insult to the huge injury of the pension boost, it turns out that last summer's pay raise — even though it was repealed in late November — will increase the pension for retiring lawmakers. The technicality applies only to those lawmakers who opted to take the pay raise immediately through the use of bogus expense reports, called unvouchered expenses, rather than wait until after the next election, as the state constitution requires.

Something is very wrong in Harrisburg when some lawmakers will now be financially rewarded for a flagrant violation of the state constitution.

But the pay raise has been repealed and now the public's attention and ire should be directed at the state employees pension crisis, resulting from lawmakers' passage of Act 9.

A recent audit of the pension funds conducted by the Commonwealth Foundation has determined that they are "unsustainable." That is, there is not enough money there without massive tax increases to be imposed on all Pennsylvanians, at either the state level or through their local school district's property taxes — or both.

One solution would be to do away with the defined benefit pension program and create a defined contribution plan, such as a 401(k) This is a change most private businesses have already made.

Another option would be to simply eliminate pensions for state lawmakers. Overly generous pensions only encourage the "job for life"mentality that is at the root of so many of today's problems in government.

Through a 1990 referendum, voters in California dropped the pension for state legislators. That decision was re-affirmed through another referendum in 2000.

That would seem an appropriate path for Pennsylvania voters, to reduce the attitude of entitlement found in Harrisburg today and return to the notion of citizen legislators who choose to serve a limited number of years and then return to the private sector.

Such an idea might sound quaint, but it could go a long way toward restoring accountability to the public in Harrisburg.

But the referendum path is not an option here. Pennsylvania's lawmakers over the years have cleverly anticipated such an unwelcome change by requiring that only referendums that are approved by the legislature may appear on the ballot. And what are the chances that the current crop of Harrisburg lawmakers would allow citizens to vote on a referendum ending, or even trimming, pension benefits to lawmakers? About zero.

The coming state employee pension crisis should serve as further fuel to continue the process begun in last month's primary elections — send incumbents into their comfortable retirements and elect men and women who care more about helping their constituents than themselves.