The Democratic Wolf administration and Republican legislative leaders have overcome deep partisan division with an agreement to do … well, not much.  Senators conducted a rare Sunday session to advance a supposed pension reform bill that does nothing to reduce the vast amounts of money that the state’s two big and vastly underfunded pension systems will suck out of the state and school district budgets for the next three decades.  After months of secret negotiations among the Republican House and Senate majorities and the Democratic administration, the key question that emerged is: What took so long?  The bill cannot be construed as true reform. The state and school districts will continue to shake down taxpayers to cover the unfunded pension liability at the same rate as now, while shifting any change well into the future, onto people who have not yet been hired by schools or the state government.

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Source: Times Tribune BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD / PUBLISHED: JUNE 6, 2017.