About what the Supreme Court said or didn't say, meant or didn't mean in its Strunk decision concerning retiree COLAs, and PERS' ability to enforce the City of Eugene "settlement" with regard to alleged 1999 "overcredits" to Tier 1 regular accounts. To repeat something said before: the Supreme Court said nothing (nada, zilch, zero) about the 1999 crediting decision and whether it was or wasn't an abuse of discretion or was or wasn't illegal. There is an extended discussion of this matter on the PERS newsgroup on Yahoo (see link at left). Until the Supreme Court issues a definitive opinion on the City of Eugene case, retirees should *not* assume that they are "insulated" from recovery of 1999 overcredits. The court may rule that they are, but nothing in Strunk says they are. For those of you who doubt this, I report (thanks to a fellow Yahoo'er) the precise language of Footnote 58 of the Strunk ruling:
"58. Put another way, the legislature took what it deemed to be restorative action, but used as the mechanism for doing so an adjustment that implicated the COLA provision of the PERS contract. Our conclusion that that particular legislative action amounted to a breach of the PERS contract, however, implies nothing about PERB's -- or, for that matter, the legislature's -- authority to recover amounts determined to have been paid from the fund in error."
To put that footnote in context, read the ORS 238.715 sections to grasp what the court explicitly went out of its way not to say.
P.S. (note added about 11:50 a.m.) Earlier this week I sent PERS a lengthy hypothetical question concerning how exactly it would implement the settlement terms for retirees IF Lipscomb were upheld. My sources wouldn't speculate on whether Lipscomb would or wouldn't be upheld, and did not want to be quoted because there is NO OFFICIAL PERS policy on this topic yet. Nevertheless, I got a window into the limits of implementating the settlement for retirees, and I was surprised by what I learned -- until I starting thinking about it more deeply. I'll post more this weekend to explain how I think the City of Eugene settlement could be implemented for retirees in the "window" period (4/1/00 to 3/1/04). Please understand that the motivation for all my questions was to try to gain purchase on the mechanisms that would be put in place to effect the settlement. As a part-time programmer and author of an earlier PERS retirement calculator, I have been urged and have been planning to implement my own version that can be used by affected retirees to determine the impact of a negative ruling in the City of Eugene case. There is so much information, speculation, and just plain mis-information floating around that until I can "know" what PERS is planning to do, I can't even begin to formulate an algorithm and program design. Once I'm certain about how they *would* implement the settlement, I can probably put something together fairly quickly. (That's one of the truly great things about object-oriented and modular programming. I can gut irrelevant pieces from the old PERS calculator I wrote, and plug in new modules to handle the specifics of the situation for retirees. I'll try to explain what I think *has* to be the method in a post over the weekend.
"58. Put another way, the legislature took what it deemed to be restorative action, but used as the mechanism for doing so an adjustment that implicated the COLA provision of the PERS contract. Our conclusion that that particular legislative action amounted to a breach of the PERS contract, however, implies nothing about PERB's -- or, for that matter, the legislature's -- authority to recover amounts determined to have been paid from the fund in error."
To put that footnote in context, read the ORS 238.715 sections to grasp what the court explicitly went out of its way not to say.
P.S. (note added about 11:50 a.m.) Earlier this week I sent PERS a lengthy hypothetical question concerning how exactly it would implement the settlement terms for retirees IF Lipscomb were upheld. My sources wouldn't speculate on whether Lipscomb would or wouldn't be upheld, and did not want to be quoted because there is NO OFFICIAL PERS policy on this topic yet. Nevertheless, I got a window into the limits of implementating the settlement for retirees, and I was surprised by what I learned -- until I starting thinking about it more deeply. I'll post more this weekend to explain how I think the City of Eugene settlement could be implemented for retirees in the "window" period (4/1/00 to 3/1/04). Please understand that the motivation for all my questions was to try to gain purchase on the mechanisms that would be put in place to effect the settlement. As a part-time programmer and author of an earlier PERS retirement calculator, I have been urged and have been planning to implement my own version that can be used by affected retirees to determine the impact of a negative ruling in the City of Eugene case. There is so much information, speculation, and just plain mis-information floating around that until I can "know" what PERS is planning to do, I can't even begin to formulate an algorithm and program design. Once I'm certain about how they *would* implement the settlement, I can probably put something together fairly quickly. (That's one of the truly great things about object-oriented and modular programming. I can gut irrelevant pieces from the old PERS calculator I wrote, and plug in new modules to handle the specifics of the situation for retirees. I'll try to explain what I think *has* to be the method in a post over the weekend.
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