The stock market run-up of the 1990s was fool’s gold for many state and local pension funds. At the height of the dot-com boom, the typical pension fund had enough on hand to cover all of its expected future costs. But booms don’t tend to last, and that one didn’t, either. There are a couple of short recent reports that offer a useful update on the current status of public pension funds. One is the “Issue Brief” by Alicia H. Munnell and Jean-Pierre Aubry called “The Funding of State and LocalPensions: 2015-2020,” published by the Center for State & Local Government Excellence in June 2016. The other, by William G. Gale and Aaron Krupkin, is called “Financing State and Local Pension Obligations:Issues and Options,” and was published as a Brookings Institution Working Paper in July 2016.