It should come as no small surprise that the New Jersey state pension fund is the Enron of state pension funds apparently:

The state Treasury Department, in a statement, said it was contacted in late April by the Securities and Exchange Commission for an inquiry into the pension system that has gone largely unfunded from 1993 through last year...New Jersey's pension fund is the nation's ninth largest, with reported assets of $79 billion but an estimated deficit of about $25 billion. [emphasis added-Ed.]

The state is struggling to make up a 4.5 billion dollar deficit in its annual budget and now it turns out there is a hole five times that size in the state pension fund.The state has now hired a private law firm to defend itself in the SEC investigation. 

Treasury Department spokesman Tom Vincz said the state has hired the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson to represent it in the matter. ...David Wald, spokesman for state Attorney General Stuart Rabner, said he didn't know immediately how much money has been spent on the outside law firm, but said its lawyers will get $495 per hour, with associates paid $180 per hour.

How much money is that?  If you were to earn $495 per hour for a 40 hour work week, you'd be making $990,000 per year.  But lawyers don't bill 40 hours per week. they bill 60-80 hours per week.  So state politicians are using your tax dollars to pay million dollar salaries for lawyers to save their own asses.  

And to think, most of these malfeasenses happened long before Corzine started cutting sweetheart salary and pension deals with his ex-girlfriend--the president of the state's largest employees union and recipient of a $6 million dollar Corzine payoff.