The latest dust-up between the Ige administration and the United Public Workers union over transferring the state-run Maui hospitals to Kaiser Permanente highlights Hawaii’s bigger problem: paying the retirement costs of public workers.

This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals told Ige to cool it, while the court double-checked to make sure that the workers at the three Maui hospitals would be protected if the transfer from a public to a private hospital system happened. The order was the result of a protest by UPW, which has fought the transfer for five years.

Most of the 1,400 unionized hospital workers are expected to stay with jobs, but both UPW and the Hawaii Government Employees Association worry that workers will lose benefits.

Lose benefits, indeed. Under legislation now up for approval or veto by Ige is a bill that could offer taxpayer-funded severance of up to half a year’s pay to all workers, even if they keep their jobs. Hospital workers will become private employees, so they won’t be contributing members to the retirement system, which will mean a loss in retirement system contributions. Estimates are that this Christmas-in-June present under the bill could cost $40 million in payouts and increase the strain on the retirement system by between $11 and $15 million a year in contributions.

That possible new tension is just what the retirement system doesn’t need.

The Pew Charitable Trust has put together a complete review of all 50 state pensions, their health care benefits and the states’ debt. It matched that data against each state’s annual income, which gives you a ratio to understand each state’s economic income.

Hawaii doesn’t have the most pension debt or the most unfunded health care debt or just debt in the nation. Most of the time it is either second or third, meaning compared to everyone else we are poor — not semi-poor, not broke, but certainly not ready to go new-car shopping.

“After Alaska, the next-largest total liabilities were in Hawaii (46.1 percent of personal income) and Illinois (31.7 percent). The largest component of future costs in Hawaii was unfunded retiree health care; in Illinois, it was unpaid pension costs,” said the just released Pew survey.

State debt is the money we owe when we borrow money to sell bonds to build or repair things like schools, bridges or roads.

The pensions are in Hawaii’s Employees’ Retirement System and the health care costs are medical insurance payments for public workers. According to new accounting requirements, each state is supposed to tuck away money every year to pay for everything.

The study points out that we have the highest debt levels at 10.6 percent of personal income, but to be fair, that is because the state of Hawaii builds schools, while in most places, the county or the city handles schools.

What we don’t have is an average annual income to pay for these public employee costs, nor do we have a legal way to stop paying.

The obvious but politically impossible answer is stop spending. And that’s Hawaii’s problem.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.