* The Civic Federation is hosting a conference on pensions today. Greg Hinz wrote a preview yesterday and here’s part of it…

Under a long-term plan approved when Jim Edgar was governor—he’s among the speakers at [today’s] conference—spending on pensions was to slowly ramp up, starting in 1995, so that funding would hit the 90 percent level by 2045. According to retirement system reports combined and passed on to me by former state CFO John Filan, unfunded liabilities were expected to rise from just under $20 billion in 1995 to $70 billion in 2034, before then dropping sharply in the next few years:

Reality has been far different than those original circa-1995 forecasts. The actual 2016 unfunded liability of $123.8 billion is two and a half times the predicted $50 billion under the Edgar ramp. And with another 17 years to go before the ramp is scheduled to peak, the spread between prediction and reality is only going to grow—a lot.

Why the bad projections? There are lots of reasons, but Filan puts a number on two of the largest: Assuming a return on investments of an overly peppy 8.5 percent a year—the retirement systems since generally have ratcheted that expectation down to 7 percent—has driven up unfunded liability $35 billion, according to Filan. And another $35 billion came when lawmakers failed to follow the ramp and instead spent money that should have gone toward pensions for other, more popular items. One instance of that came during Filan’s tenure, when the state issued $10 billion in pension-obligation bonds but used those proceeds to replace normal pension contributions, which were spent on other items.