The gap between the promises Iowa has made for public employees’ retirement benefits and the money set aside to pay for them has grown to $5.7 billion – a 1,643-percent increase over 11 years, State Auditor David Vaudt said Monday.

“We had just a $327-million liability at the end of 2000. That has now grown to $5.7 billion, and that’s equal almost to one year’s general-fund budget,” Vaudt said. “We’re going to need substantial resources in the future to improve the funded status of this particular plan.”

A report last year by State Budget Solutions, a national not-for-profit advocating for fundamental reform of state budgets, pegs Iowa’s unfunded liability as even larger – $21.3 billion as of last March.

After more than a decade of extreme scandal and gross government mismanagement, far too many Illinoisans seem to be wallowing or even perversely reveling in our state’s embarrassing failures. Just try to point out a positive aspect of this state and you’ll be shouted down by all sides as a naive homer.

But accentuating the positive is just what Governor Pat Quinn tried to do last week, and, man, was he ever hammered for it.

Putting aside all the resulting uproar for a moment, the governor’s State of the State address was probably the best speech I’ve ever heard Quinn give, at least on a technical basis. It was well-written (his 2010 speech was horribly ad-libbed), well-delivered (he’s given some real snoozers), and, as far as a State of the State speech goes, it hit all the right high notes.

Jody Miller played online poker for three to four years before the government cracked down on the practice a couple of years ago.

Before that, Miller said, online poker was technically never legal, but the laws were rarely enforced. Increased government enforcement, he said, made it more difficult to play and caused some online poker Web sites to shut down. Some players saw their assets frozen and become tied up in online accounts.

Miller, 34, of Indianola, said it’s time for Iowa to legalize online poker.

“I think it’s an opportunity to capture some funding if you can legalize it – for the state to capture the revenue. Now’s the time to do it,” Miller said. “I think people are doing it anyway.”

Iowa Senate State Government Committee Chair Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls) said the federal government has done a poor job of telling Americans what is legal in terms of online poker.

Danielson said he plans to introduce a bill this month that would legalize online poker in Iowa. He said the nation had a tremendous rise in poker activity until 2009. At its peak, he said, Iowans were spending close to $100 million outside the state on online poker.

If students enrolled at Iowa’s state universities have to pay higher tuition, university presidents should share the pain, some House Republicans said.

“This is about making accountable a person that is receiving a half a million dollars in tax dollars to run an institution,” said state Representative Jeff Kaufmann (R-Wilton). “This is not about denigrating the university. This is about improving it on behalf of the taxpayers and the students of the state.”

Especially infuriating some House Republicans was University of Iowa President Sally Mason’s hiring of two highly paid assistants during tough budget times. Tysen Kendig was hired as vice president for strategic communication in February 2010 and is paid $280,000; Mark Braun was named Mason’s chief of staff in October 2008 and makes $200,000, lawmakers said. Kaufmann called the hirings “absolutely indefensible.”