Gov. Tom Corbett surprised many in the state yesterday when he announced a lawsuit against the NCAA over the fines and punishments against Penn State University over the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal.

Reversing his earlier support of the NCAA actions, Corbett is attracting attention and stimulating debate over the fairness and impact of NCAA penalties on the university, students and small businesses in State College.

While Corbett’s lawsuit against the NCAA has people talking, the governor’s time and energy would be better spent focusing on several long-simmering crises facing the state, starting with pension reform and transportation funding.

In Pennsylvania, like most other states, public employee pensions threaten to bankrupt the state, taxpayers — or both. In Illinios, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is pushing for legislative action on state pensions that are only 40 percent funded. Lawmakers there are considering a combination of fixes, including requiring beneficiaries to contribute more to their pensions, raising the retirement ages and capping cost-of-living increases.

Similar proposals are being debated in other states.

So far, in Pennsylvania, the governor and lawmakers only talk about the need to address pension reform. No serious debate has begun, despite the fact that underfunded pensions for public employees will soon hit taxpayers through both their state tax bills and their local property tax bills. The 2001 pension grab that saw state lawmakers vote themselves a 50 percent pension increase, and then give a 25 percent pension boost to other state workers as well as public school teachers, only made the current pension crisis worse.

Past pension reform efforts, including measures supported by former Gov. Ed Rendell, only delayed the crisis with accounting gimmicks and minor pension changes. None of those actions could be honestly called pension reform.

Corbett and state legislative leaders have only paid lip serv-ice to pension reform, offering no concrete proposals. The same can be said of Harrisburg’s lack of leadership on transportation funding.

Corbett vowed to make transportation funding a priority for 2013. But he’s already demonstrated a discouraging lack of leadership or courage in failing to take action in 2012.

A special committee appointed by Corbett to study the transportation funding crisis facing the state issued a comphrensive report in August 2011. But instead of acting, or even pressing for further debate on solutions, Corbett put the commission’s report on the shelf to gather dust.

The report warned that the state’s unfunded transportation needs would hit $7.5 billion in 10 years if nothing was done to bring in more money for roads and bridges.

But the study, which contained a mix of common-sense proposals such as raising some fees, lifting the cap on the oil franchise tax and dedicating a portion of the state sales tax to transportation, was ignored by Corbett and state lawmakers.

With no action last year, the funding crisis in transportation, like the pension crisis, is only growing worse.

Citizens, drivers and taxpayers might not like the solutions because they will cost them something. But Corbett should demonstrate some leadership — and backbone — by stepping forward to tell the truth about both the transportation infrastructure and public pension crises. Both are serious threats to the state’s future.

The lawsuit against the NCAA over the Penn State actions is little more than a distraction compared with the long-term threats posed by the public pension and transportation funding crises.