It's widely known that Pennsylvania, like many other states, is facing a public employee pension crisis. There have been warnings in recent years of big tax increases that will hit taxpayers to make up multibillion-dollar gaps between assets in the pension funds and the future liabilities those funds must cover.

National publications, such as Fortune magazine, have written about the ticking time bombs that public pensions have become across the country.

In Pennsylvania, most of the talk has been about how devastating the coming tax increases will be to school districts and their tax-paying property owners. Taxpayers across the state are expected to see major tax increases starting in 2012-13.

The impact of the pension crisis in Pennsylvania was pushed back a few years, thanks to some legislative tweaking and accounting changes. But the time bomb still is ticking and the bill is coming due soon.

Last week, in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie actually did something about his state's pension crisis by pushing some meaningful reforms that he signed into law after his state's Legislature passed the three-bill package by an overwhelming margin.

Republican Christie was elected in November in what was considered an upset by stressing the need for fiscal discipline. By signing into law such meaningful reforms to the public pension system, Christie is showing the kind of political leadership that has been lacking in Pennsylvania.

Somehow, New Jersey's newly elected governor and its state lawmakers moved pension reform legislation from introduction of the bills to law in just six weeks. In Pennsylvania, where last year's state budget wasn't completed until six months after the legal deadline, the contrast of such legislative effectiveness is striking.

Future state workers in New Jersey will see benefits trimmed 9 percent from current levels and all public employees, including lawmakers, will have to start contributing 1.5 percent of their pay toward their health care coverage.

New Jersey also is making changes to how pensions are calculated, using the average of the past five years rather than the past three and allowing only one job's salary to be considered.

In a move that should be followed by Pennsylvania, Christie reversed a 9 percent pension boost approved by lawmakers in 2001, the same year Keystone State lawmakers awarded themselves a 50 percent pension boost and gave other state employees, including public school teachers, a 25 percent pension increase.

In 2001, Pennsylvania lawmakers took a "heads we win, tails you lose" approach to public pension funds.

At the peak of the dot-com stock bubble, the state's two big pension funds each had a healthy surplus. They were "overfunded," with assets exceeding liabilities. But instead of keeping the extra money as a cushion against stock market retreats, lawmakers took the surplus to give themselves a 50 percent pension boost. And after learning of that self-serving action, other state employees pressured lawmakers into granting 25 percent pension increases for other state workers, including teachers. Soon after the pension grabs, which lawmakers said would "not cost taxpayers a dime," the stock market collapsed.

Christie has shown that such irresponsible pension moves can be rolled back. And if Gov. Ed Rendell wants to leave a legacy beyond bringing slot machines to Pennsylvania, he should follow New Jersey's governor in bringing real pension reform and tax relief to the commonwealth.

If Rendell does not act to roll back pension benefits for state employees, including lawmakers, each candidate for governor in the November election should be pressed to support such a plan. And candidates for the General Assembly should pledge to support pension reforms that roll back the unconscionable 2001 pension grab and also limit future growth in public pension liabilities.

Pennsylvanians do not have to look far to see that tax increases are not the only solution to solving the state's pension crisis. Neighbor New Jersey has shown that pension liabilities can be trimmed.

Still, rolling back the Legislature's 2001 pension grab will not solve Pennsylvania's pension problems. But it would be a start and a move in the right direction, which eventually would shift public employees out of defined benefit programs and into defined contribution plans, like the 401(k) programs covering most private sector employees.

Christie has shown that real pension reform is possible.