With the financial nuclear bomb threatening Pennsylvania taxpayers set to go off in 2012 or before, it cannot be ignored any longer. The two massive Pennsylvania pension programs for state workers and teachers are in deep trouble, and taxpayer contributions might have to be increased by more than 600 percent in the next three or four years.

A March report presented to a state House panel revealed that taxpayers could be hit with an additional $5 billion in annual payments to the pension funds.

The stock market decline associated with the economic crisis has only made things worse. But even without stock market declines approaching 50 percent, the big state pension funds probably would be in trouble.

Other states face public pension problems too. But Pennsylvania's pension fund problems were dramatically worsened by state lawmakers in 2001 when they quietly increased their own pension benefits by 50 percent.

There was little or no public debate of that action before the vote. And when news of that self-serving action by lawmakers spread, teachers demanded similar treatment. Lawmakers responded by boosting the promised pension payments to 300,000 teachers and other state employees by 25 percent.

The so-called pension grab of 2001 occurred four years before the notorious legislative pay-raise vote of 2005. Following that 2 a.m. action, equally self-serving on the part of state lawmakers, the public easily understood what had happened and became outraged.

The public furor eventually led to the Legislature repealing the pay raise for lawmakers. The portion of the pay raise targeting judges was retained, based on a questionable legal argument by judges that the state constitution prohibits reducing the pay of judges. Even though the law was designed to protect judges from recrimination from lawmakers, it proved to be a legal argument for retaining the judges' pay increases.

But if legal technicalities were valid in that case, then the pension grab of 2001 should be challenged. There is little doubt that that bill's progression through the General Assembly did not follow the letter of the law, which calls for three days of public hearings in both the House and Senate, among other provisions.

A legal challenge to the pension grab of 2001 would ease the looming public pension crisis but probably not solve it.

But expecting state courts to rule against the Legislature is a long shot because the court system in Pennsylvania, notably the state Supreme Court, has proved ineffective or disinterested when it comes to openly examining charges that the Legislature has acted unconstitutionally.

Short of a federal court ruling that rolls back the 2001 pension grab, state taxpayers will soon face the consequences of Harrisburg greed, made worse by the recent stock market declines.

The facts presented in the Associated Press article on the Butler Eagle's front page yesterday are stunning. The pension plans estimate that the $821 million they receive in "employer contributions," which comes from property taxes paid to school districts, will have to increase to $5.7 billion a year by 2012.

And even that number could be a low-ball figure, because the pension funds' calculations are based on the assumption that their investments will earn 8.5 percent this year. For 2009, those pension funds are down about 6 percent.

The looming state pension crisis is a shameful situation for which state lawmakers are mostly to blame. Their greed and arrogance in 2001 came at a high point in the stock market. Instead of allowing accumulated surpluses from good investment returns in the late 1990s to remain in the funds as a cushion against a future down market, they decided to take the surplus and give to themselves in pension payments essentially a deferred pay raise.

The pay-raise vote ignited voter outrage. The less-publicized and less-understood pension grab of 2001 should have resulted in the same or a greater level of voter outrage.

It didn't then, but if massive property tax increases arrive in the next few years for the pension funds, a delayed voter outrage could be, and should be, awakened. And that outrage should target any and all state lawmakers who voted for the 2001 pension grab.

Lawmakers should undo the pension grab and minimize the pain for taxpayers, or face ouster by voters.