The Strunk decision is history. People are wondering what might happen next. So far not much. But there are some people out there who are crying in the wilderness for direction. These are the people who, in the aftermath of 2003 Legislative reforms, found themselves faced with a tenfold (or more) increase in the price of full-cost purchases of service time. These were catch-22 situations for the most part. Members anticipated retiring based on a set of assumptions in force a month earlier. Imagine their surprise when they got their final estimate for the cost of purchasing enough time to permit them to retire. It was a huge shock to discover the actuarial ramifications of the 0% crediting assumption, for example. So what do you do in this situation? Some members sucked it up, paid the money, and retired. Others stayed on until they had enough service credit or age (or both) to retire without purchasing the time. Some continue to work. The question for today is whether any of the Strunk "fixes" will result in PERS revisiting, recalculating, and refunding with interest the excess cost retirees paid to get out of the system. Since these excessive costs were built on now-illegal assumptions, it strikes me that a remedy for this problem should unfold in the same way that adjustments to the COLA freeze and to the 0% crediting for 2003 arise.
Those interested in answers to some common questions about the Strunk decision may find the following link helpful.
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