Gaslighting Abbie

Do you ever wake up and think that you've stepped into the middle of a break in the space-time continuum? Lately that's where I seem to find myself as I try to decipher the pretzel logic of the Supreme Court's ruling in Strunk, the Lipscomb order and opinion, the "settlement", and just about everything else PERS-related. Our riddle for today (anticipated in a afterword placed inside yesterday's post "Still the Same") is: when is a COLA freeze not a COLA freeze? Did you know that none of us "window retirees" have had a COLA freeze? Huh? I retired in 10/2002 and have NEVER once received a COLA. Looks like a COLA freeze to me. But, when you parse the Supreme Court's opinion in Strunk they didn't say that a COLA freeze was illegal. What they said was that PERS could not define a "fixed benefit" to which no COLA attached. So, according to the Court we've all had a "fixed benefit", not a benefit for which the COLA has been frozen. There is this second benefit, called the "revised benefit", which reflects an adjustment for the present value of the alleged overcredit in 1999. It is smaller than the fixed benefit, or still is for most "window" retirees. This "revised benefit" gets COLA adjustments annually. It is only when the "revised benefit" exceeds the "fixed benefit" does the retiree start to get the "revised benefit" to which the COLAs are attached. The Supreme Court ruled that this was not legal - PERS cannot define a "fixed benefit" to which no COLA attaches. Confused? It gets better. The COLA "freeze" is defined in section 14b.1.a as a permissible remedy for "erroneous calculations" identified in the City of Eugene case. Since that case is still in litigation, the court essentially argued that section 14b(1)(b) was not "ripe" for adjudication -- the "trigger" for the COLA freeze hasn't been pulled yet. I can't recall whether the OPRI case (Sartain v PERB et al) directly addressed 14(b)(1)(a), but it isn't addressed directly in the Strunk opinion. So whether you *think* you've been COLA frozen or not is immaterial. It doesn't appear that 14(b)(1)(a) has been applied yet and so you can't claim harm for remedy not applied. Does this mean you won't be subject to a COLA freeze? Beats me. I'm just looking for a new word to describe the fact that I haven't seen a COLA in 3 years, and when I retired no one told me that I was receiving this "thing" called a "fixed benefit" to which no COLA attached. In fact, I retired BEFORE Judge Lipscomb issued his final opinion and well before HB 2003 was even a twinkle in Bill Gary's eyes. So, in my humble opinion, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be .... a beaver? (sorry, couldn't resist a bit of intrastate rivalry there). Welcome to the wacky world of Oregon politics and retributional jurisprudence. It ain't a COLA freeze til we tell you it is.

Greg Hartman confirms that 14b remains one of the unresolved issues in Strunk. Only *after* Lipscomb is decided can there be any pursuit of 14b, if necessitated by the decisions in Lipscomb. In the meantime, there is an odd footnote in Strunk (9 for those interested), which asserts that the PERB agreed(in its "settlement" of City of Eugene) to *not* apply the remedies identified in 14b, yet 14b is never once mentioned in the "settlement". So even if COLA freezes are in vogue, you ain't gonna get one even if you want one. But you haven't had a COLA freeze anyway so what are you complaining about? Are you thoroughly confused now? Don't feel bad. You've been gaslighted and it's contagious. We now return you to the twilight zone.