A bit of sanity

Earlier this week, the Arizona state Senate joined the House in approving a measure that will pare back the costs of government retirement benefits.

The catalyst for the reform, which GOP Gov. Jan Brewer has said she will sign, came from reports in the Arizona Republic that pension expenses now cost the state nearly $1.4 billion a year and that retirement trust fund reserves fall far below private industry standards for soundness. Lawmakers also discovered that some of the retirement trust funds were near depletion because of heavy losses during the stock market meltdown in 2008. For the past two years Arizona has had the largest fiscal deficit as a share of its budget of any state. WSJ