You don't have to search long to find articles about public pension liability these days.  And they are appearing in the biggest publications from high profile authors.

Last Friday the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion column from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger focused on the retirement cost of California's public sector workforce.  Here's an excerpt:

As former Speaker of the State Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown pointed out earlier this year in the San Francisco Chronicle, roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Those costs have been rising fast. Spending on California's state employees over the past decade rose at nearly three times the rate our revenues grew, crowding out programs of great importance to our citizens. Neglected priorities include higher education, environmental protection, parks and recreation, and more.

Much bigger increases in employee costs are on the horizon. Thanks to huge unfunded pension and retirement health-care promises granted by past governments, and also to deceptive pension-fund accounting that understated liabilities and overstated future investment returns, California is now saddled with $550 billion of retirement debt.

Read more at: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future