When California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer dropped by The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board last week to talk about public employee pensions, he said he didn't have "settled, crisp views" on pension reform. That statement surprised everyone in the room.

After all, Lockyer is one of the state's chief financial officers, a man who's been sitting on the boards of the state's two biggest public pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the State Teachers' Retirement System, for five years now.

He claimed that he, along with Gov. Jerry Brown, occupies the "weak middle" of the pension reform debate between labor leaders who seek to maintain the status quo and conservatives who would do away with guaranteed retirement benefits altogether. At the same time, he refused to fully endorse the governor's pension reform proposal, even its provisions raising retirement ages.

His comments were far fuzzier than the opinion piece he later submitted to The Bee that appears in Viewpoints today. On one point, however, his comments to the editorial board and in the article are totally consistent. Lockyer believes the recent Stanford study on public pensions is "propaganda," not honest academic research.

That study concluded the state's three major public pension systems. CalPERS, CalSTRS and the University of California retirement system, are between $500 billion and $143 billion short of the funds they will need to pay promised retirement obligations over the next 30 years. Lockyer accuses the report's lead author, former Democratic Assemblyman Joe Nation, of being a captive of the Wall Street crowd that demonizes public employees and wants to eviscerate public pensions.

The debate between Lockyer and Nation, between those who think the pension systems are dangerously underfunded and those who think they are fundamentally sound, is a complicated numbers game. Unfortunately, the data can be manipulated and have been by both sides.

In his op-ed, Lockyer accuses Nation and Stanford of using investment return assumptions that exaggerate the pension systems' unfunded liabilities. But then he selectively plucks numbers out of a database that paint the rosiest picture possible of the pension funds' investment prospects.

The stakes are enormous. If the state low-balls the estimated rate of investment returns, state and local governments and public employees will have to increase contributions to the pension systems by billions of dollars.

Yet conversely, if the state overestimates investment returns and the market goes south, it could saddle future generations with a crushing bill in pension payouts for state and local employees.

Lockyer and Controller John Chiang, who, like the treasurer, resigned in protest from the Stanford research body's advisory panel after release of its controversial study, have raised the rhetoric but not shed much light.

And enlightenment is what the pension debate sorely needs. If Lockyer and Chiang don't trust the Stanford numbers, they should sponsor their own study – using credible independent actuaries and financial prognosticators.

Lockyer says CalPERS is trustworthy to do this kind of analysis, which is mind-boggling. CalPERS has a long way to go to regain credibility after claiming it could cover the costs imposed by Senate Bill 400, the 1999 law that jacked up benefits for public employees.

Yes, it will cost money to sponsor an independent assessment of pension liabilities, but the costs of making decisions blindly are far higher. Lockyer and Chiang have a fiduciary responsibility to nail down the numbers. They need to exercise it.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.