HARRISBURG A continued failure by state lawmakers to act is allowing a growing problem of municipal pension debt in Pennsylvania to get worse, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said Wednesday.

DePasquale renewed the warning he gave a year ago, saying that municipal pension debt in the billions of dollars is putting municipalities and retiree benefits on shaky ground."I'm going to continue to beat this drum until we tackle this as a state," DePasquale said.In the 2013-14 legislative session, two competing House bills designed to start addressing the pension debt did not make it out of committee. With about 1,200 municipalities running about 2,600 pension plans, no other state does as bad a job as Pennsylvania, DePasquale said. Most other states manage it at the state or county level, he said."We are the absolute worst at this," he said.DePasquale said that municipal governments with the weakest pension plans were underfunding them by $7.7 billion through 2012, an increase of $1 billion after DePasquale's office analyzed two years of new data.That increase took place during a time when the economy was growing and stock market values were rising, DePasquale noted. Historically, the pension plans of police and firefighters have been responsible for most of the debt.Nearly 70 percent of that $7.7 billion debt, or $5.3 billion, belonged to Philadelphia, according to DePasquale's office. Pittsburgh was second with $485 million. Among Pennsylvania's cities, Scranton had the worst funding ratio at 23 percent.DePasquale warned that, unless changes are made, rising pension debt that forces a municipality into bankruptcy could mean benefit reductions for retirees. Some municipalities will have to raise taxes or lay off police and firefighters, he said."Some of them may be forced to do both," DePasquale said.DePasquale said Gov.-elect Tom Wolf, who takes the oath of office next Tuesday, has told him that he will take the issue seriously.Slightly more than half of the 1,200 municipalities with pension plans had funded them at 90 percent or higher, and were not counted as underfunded.Rep. Glen Grell, R-Cumberland, is planning to reintroduce his bill that died last year. It would funnel all newly hired police officers into one statewide plan that would bar cost-of-living adjustments, require participants to contribute 7.5 percent of their salary to the system and limit the use of overtime hours to drive up the basis for an retiree's annual pension benefit.Rep. Keith Greiner, R-Lancaster, said he plans to reintroduce a bill that died last year.That bill would not have consolidated plans into one, but would have created a cash balance plan in each municipality, except Philadelphia, with full-time public safety personnel. It would offer new employees a more modest benefit based on percentage of pay, raise the retirement age and limit the use of overtime hours to drive up pension benefits.