People who spend their careers in public service for local and/or state governments have come to depend on the reliability of pensions and perhaps even health benefits being there for them when the time comes to retire. But as recent times have shown, that reliability is in question in many places across the country. Going from fully or almost fully funded, most pension plans are now deep in the hole as governments have postponed making contributions or placed those contributions in investments that have lost, rather than gained, value over the years. As a result, states, cities and municipalities are now in the position of looking for ways to cut benefits or even declare bankruptcy and avoid paying them altogether, leaving the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to pick up what it can. Research from the Pew Charitable Trusts examined the protections in place on such benefits in a 50-state survey of retirement plans, separately evaluating pension and health benefits. The news is not reassuring, with the report pointing out that despite "a decade of unprecedented changes to benefit design and financing, … many jurisdictions are still short of what they need to fully fund retirement benefit obligations." In 2000, the report says, public retirement systems were almost fully funded. Now, however, it's a different story, with states now facing "aggregate unfunded pension liabilities grow to more than $1 trillion, with an additional $700 billion in unfunded retiree health benefit costs." The slides above tell 10 things the study revealed about the variance in legal protections for benefits workers will be depending on in retirement.