A few days back, when Gov. Jerry Brown talked about his trigger cuts and tax increases, he repeated his assertion that without credible pension reform passed this year by the Legislature's Democratic majority, voters won't be as likely to pass the tax increases he so desperately wants.

Which raises the question: What is credible pension reform? Pensions – in and of themselves – are not the problem. There is nothing wrong with providing government employees a reliable basic stipend after a reasonably lengthy career of service. The problem is that our current system simply is not sustainable.

Too many employees have been promised too much for too long, without the people making those promises setting aside enough to make sure the money will be there when needed.

This shortfall is what is called the unfunded liability, and it comes in two parts. First, there are the pension payments themselves. In addition, there are the bills that will have to be paid for the government retiree's lifetime health care benefits. As it stands, those costs combine with hundreds of billions of dollars our state and local governments are contractually obligated to pay with money it doesn't have for the future. That's the heart of the pension problem.

Now, common sense would dictate that if you're going to fix a problem, the first step would be figuring out just how big a problem you have to solve.

Credible estimates of our state's unfunded liability by outside analysts currently range between 100 billion and a half-trillion (with a T, as in terrific!) dollars. Too big, even by government standards. We simply must make a reasonable effort to agree on how big the problem is.

Why is this step so important? If the unfunded liability is the core problem (which it is), the only effective yardstick for measuring the value of various pension reform elements will be determining how much they each reduce the unfunded liability.

Otherwise, we face the very real risk of accomplishing nothing more than a cosmetic fix.

But Gov. Brown and the majority Democrats who control the state Legislature are doing everything they can to avoid determining the size and scope of the unfunded liability.

This despite the best efforts of Republicans like State Sen. Mimi Walters' recent effort to point this out at both of the Legislature's joint pension reform committee hearings – she's been pushed aside by the Democrats who run the committee.

Simply put, what's the point of discussing, much less passing, pension reforms that do not fix the problem with pensions?

And if the best the Legislature can accomplish in a single year is a partial fix, don't we deserve to know whether they have fixed it by a third, or a half, or whatever so that we'll know how much is left to fix at a later date? Can you imagine why the Democratic-controlled Legislature does not want to quantify the magnitude of the problem?

The public employee unions on which the Democrats rely for their campaign contributions are busy pretending the pending pension collapse is a myth, and putting an official price tag on the hole that needs to be filled works against that effort. It would also introduce a level of accountability to their own pension reform efforts, and that's something the Democrats are desperate to avoid.

After all, where's the fun in running government if you're going to be held accountable for your results?

If Gov. Brown says the public deserves credible pension reform, especially in exchange for public approval for his tax increase, we, the public, also deserve proof of that credibility. Show us the money. Show us some real, money-saving pension reform.

Show us, Gov. Brown, how what you say you want to do will actually return our pension system to solvency and leave California enough money in the future for our vitally needed education, health, social programs and other critically needed infrastructure.

Or else, why are we even bothering to pay attention to your initiative proposal? It's not like the governor would try to trick us into supporting a tax increase with a mirage like pension reform, would he?

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Eric Hogue is a talk show host on KTKZ (1380 AM) in Sacramento and vice president of advancement at William Jessup University.

• Read more articles by Eric Hogue