They have had plenty of warning but I doubt we are going to get through this without some federal aid for states that have had many decades of bad decision making. The price for that help should be a complete halt to rewarding corrupt officials and a cap on pension payouts that does not touch the average powerless schmuck but does cut off the people who should have known better from drawing six-figure annual retirement payouts. The alternative is the current generation paying for the screwups of decades before, and mass economic destruction. It is what it is, but there needs to be a completely transparent reckoning so that people don’t keep doing the same things all over again.
Look at Illinois.
Why Illinois Is In Trouble – 109,881 Public Employees With $100,000+ Paychecks Cost Taxpayers $14B
Other corrupt states have people collecting pensions inflated even more because they illegally held more than one state job (NJ is horrible for this).