[King_Corey]

And Texans pay far too much... These should be diminished until ZERO. Pensions should go away and people should have to pay their own retirement. If a pension were to remain it should be 100% funded before granted. No Debt to finance it, and no future payments. Our debt driven economy is going to make us Greece soon.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Term limits for all state employees.
That should do it.

[hocndoc]

Pensions that are fully funded by employers or unions are a thing of the past, but I do believe in keeping a contract so we have to plan on the pensions we have.

In fact, Governor Perry has championed changing our State pensions to private plans.

Texas has kept a lid on our spending and debt.

[q_an_a]

most people have no idea about the TX retirment sytstem!! It presently has 111 BILLION IN ASSETS, which are used to pay out the retirement of a few thousand people - as the story says, we have many fewer than Calif or NY which are about the same population. Last year the fund outperformed the market by 2.3 billion. That pays for a heck of a lot of teachers or other employees. During the past 4 years, state workers have been getting less than inflation raises...if they do get a raise.

Where our biggest bite of tax dollars go - is to schools and again as the story said, TX out performs most in the nation with the 47th lowest cost per student. Sounds like the people are getting their monies worth compared to most states.