The New York Times published Public Pension Plans Face Billions in Shortages, the first in a series articles “that will examine actions of state and local governments that have left taxpayers with large unpaid bills for public employee pensions:”

Across the nation, a number of states, counties and municipalities have engaged in many of the same maneuvers with their pension funds that San Diego did, but without the crippling scandal — at least not yet.

It is hard to know the extent of the problems, because there is no central regulator to gather data on public plans. Nor is the accounting for government pension plans uniform, so comparing one with another can be unreliable.

But by one estimate, state and local governments owe their current and future retirees roughly $375 billion more than they have committed to their pension funds.

Some estimates have the funding gap at $500 billion or more. How could this occur?

Still, the lack of a national response to what would seem to be a nationwide problem underscores a peculiarity of the public pension world: like banks and insurance companies, the pension plans are large and complex financial institutions, but they face no comparable systems of checks and balances.

“There’s no oversight; there’s no requirements; there’s no enforcement,” said Lance Weiss, an actuary with Deloitte Consulting in Chicago who advised Illinois on its pension problems. “You’re kind of working off the good will of these public entities.”

Experts do not think that is good enough.

It’s another case of a complicated, technical problem (government pensions) caught somewhere between the experts (staff, bankers, lawyers) and the politicians who can’t be held accountable until calamity strikes. It took a whistle-blower in San Diego. Hurricane Katrina and failed levees in New Orleans.

What’s happening in your neck of the woods?