Pennsylvania's day of reckoning over its multibillion-dollar pension promises to government employees and teachers has been pushed back for the better part of the past decade.

But long-expected increases in costs are scheduled to kick in three years from now, and meeting those retirement obligations could cripple state government and school boards.

Depending on what happens in the stock market, taxpayers could soon find themselves stuck paying more than $5 billion in additional annual payments.

The figure is a moving target. But in a March presentation to a state House panel, the state's two large public-sector pension plans estimated that the $821 million a year they currently get in "employer contributions" - the vast majority of it from taxpayers - will need to grow to $5.7 billion a year by 2012.

Even more frightening is that those numbers involve assumptions that could be overly optimistic. For example, the state government pension system's numbers assume it will earn 8.5 percent this year, but its 2009 investments are currently about 6 percent in the red.

Pennsylvania's state government may not be open and accountable enough as it handles federal stimulus money, the state's fiscal watchdog warned in a letter to federal officials that The Associated Press obtained Monday.

Auditor General Jack Wagner's letter to a U.S. Government Accountability Office administrator warned that internal controls are so weak that information about how stimulus funds are spent will be unreliable without oversight from an independent audit agency.

"We are extremely concerned about the potential for a lack of statewide government transparency and accountability in the use of these vitally important funds," Wagner wrote to Phillip R. Herr, the federal agency's director of physical infrastructure issues.

Wagner listed Medicaid, low-income heating aid and weatherization assistance as examples of federally funded programs administered by the state that have "significant internal control weaknesses." He said a significant issue was the limited scope of information provided for the audits his own office has performed.

Last year, a Lehigh County constable turned in expense reports for 76,000 miles of travel in one year. The constable averaged, he claimed, 208 miles in his car every day.

In Northampton County, a constable billed for 1,800 travel miles in one day -- an average of 75 miles an hour for each of the day's 24 hours.

Constables' mileage -- billed at 48.5 cents a mile in both counties in 2007, when both bills were submitted -- are usually paid by defendants but often fall to county taxpayers when defendants can't cover them.

The alleged overbilling here and a number of other billing and conduct problems across Pennsylvania highlight what state and county officials say is an ongoing problem with the county constable system: lack of oversight.

Now State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille has teamed with a state legislator from Berks County and they are poised to introduce the first set of reforms to a system they have called outdated and unwieldy.

''We would like to bring some organizational structure and professional control over their activities to make them more efficient and less costly,'' said Castille, who is working to institute one set of standards for all constables statewide.