The PERS system is underfunded and costs governments record sums, but some lawmakers want to sweeten the pot.
OREGON — Oregon lawmakers are currently wrestling in Salem with federal cuts for health care and food assistance programs.
At the same time, some legislators are also trying to expand retirement benefits for some public employees.
Senate Bill 1569 would significantly boost benefits for juvenile court counselors, police fingerprint technicians, deputy attorneys general doing criminal work, and others. It would do so by expanding the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System’s definition of “police.”
It’s an important distinction because police (and firefighters) can retire earlier with higher pensions than general service workers because their work is considered more dangerous and stressful.
A PERS analyst told lawmakers at a Feb. 4 public hearing on the bill that the proposed change would add about 20% to the pension benefit of each affected employee. (A PERS member who retired in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, earned an average pension of $48,807 a year.)
The total cost of SB 1569 is unclear because PERS and local governments have not yet determined how many employees’ benefits would be boosted should the bill pass. Based on preliminary information, there are at least 700 but perhaps many more.
For the past 20 years, lawmakers have intermittently tried to trim public employee pension benefits because their predecessors promised overly generous pensions to public workers. The result left the 421,000-member system underfunded. PERS’s most recent annual report shows the system has 77 cents of assets for every dollar of liabilities, or a $24.8 billion shortfall.
Despite that funding gap, lawmakers in recent years began raising benefits again.
In 2023, as The Oregonian reported, lawmakers reclassified the state’s hundreds of deputy district attorneys as police. And in 2024, they expanded the definition of police to include elected district attorneys and Oregon State Police evidence technicians and forensic scientists.
Lawmakers also sought to boost the pensions of 911 operators, and Oregon State Hospital employees who deal with patients.
PERS officials warned in 2024, however, that categorizing the hospital and 911 workers as police could jeopardize the legal basis for the PERS system. Lawmakers came up with a solution that allowed them to extend benefits. They created a “hazardous position” classification that gave those two groups the enhanced retirement benefits enjoyed by police and firefighters, as Willamette Week reported.
For Gov. Tina Kotek, the 2024 PERS expansion was enough, she said at the time. She signed the bill, but asked lawmakers for a “moratorium on any substantive benefit changes to PERS for the foreseeable future.”
That foreseeable future is now. On Feb. 4, a number of public employees seeking this reclassification testified to the Senate Committee on Labor and Business about the difficulty of their jobs and the concept of “benefit equity.”
Portland police fingerprint technicians wondered why their counterparts in the Oregon State Police deserved better retirement benefits. State deputy attorneys general who handle criminal cases asked why they should get less than county assistant district attorneys doing similar work.
Under the terms of SB 1569, they and various other technical workers at county, municipal and university police forces would get the higher benefit, as would juvenile court counselors and “force protection officers” working for the Oregon Military Department.
Two public employer groups, the Oregon League of Cities and the Association of Oregon Counties, testified in opposition to the bill. Their members and a total of 907 local government agencies already pay more than 23% of covered salary in PERS assessments, the highest rates ever. Some government agencies, according to League of Cities lobbyist Scott Winkels, are paying a third of their payroll to cover PERS costs.
“Now is not the time for an increase,” Winkels said.
Responding to questions about the timing and need for the bill, state Sen. Chris Gorsek (D-Gresham), who along with Sen. James Manning (D-Eugene) is a chief sponsor, tells OJP that it’s up to the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee to decide whether SB 1569 is a good idea.
“That is where we decide what we can afford,” Gorsek says. “That’s how the process is supposed to work.”
Joe Baessler, the statewide executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, tells OJP the bill is a matter of fairness for about 200 AFSCME members who would benefit.
“There are workers outside of police and fire who do dangerous work similar to those in police and fire,” Baessler says. “This is an equity issue for these workers, who put their personal safety on the line to keep our communities safe and healthy.”
Asked why AFSCME is pushing for benefits during a short session in which budget cuts are the focus, Baessler says, “You lose 100% of the battles you don't fight.”
As to Kotek’s 2024 call for a moratorium, a spokesperson for the governor says she will not commit to signing or vetoing SB 1569 should it pass.
The bill is set for an information hearing and possible work session Feb. 9 at 1 p.m.
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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project (oregonjournalismproject.org), a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon.
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