Fool's Game

It is utterly amazing to me to hear the stories people tell me. At times, I'm torn between laughing so hard that men in white coats will come carry me away ("they're coming to take me away, haha, hoho, heehee....), and screaming from the rooftops that I'm mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Two recent examples: 1) a person retired on 1/1/05 and received his Notice of Entitlement after the Supreme Court ruled in Strunk. The NOE did not include any earnings crediting for 2003 or 2004, but reduced the account balance by the present value of the 1999 earnings "overcredit". The member contested the NOE, asking PERS for the statutory or legal citation from the OAR and/or ORS that permits them to withhold the 2003 and 2004 earnings *after* Strunk. PERS responded by considering the contest and adjusting the benefit accordingly to include the 8% for 2003, 8% for 2004, reduction of 1999 earnings, and allowing for the 2% COLA to be effective 8/1/05. Net result is the member is getting $952 more per month than what the NOE called for. 2) Member retires 6/1/05 - ostensibly within the period of time that PERS claimed it would begin applying both Strunk and the settlement prior to a final ruling in Lipscomb. Member gets Notice of Estimated Benefits which shows that he did *not* get 8% for 2003 did *not* get 8% for 2004, continues to be credited with 20% for 1999. In short, PERS did NOT, contrary to what its Board accepted as a "staff recommendation" in March, implement any element of the settlement or Strunk for members retiring right now. This interpretation is confirmed by PERS reps. This can only make you daft trying to figure out what PERS will do or not do for an encore. More bizarre is the transparently different treatment these two members got. One member, upon raising the perfectly legitimate question of PERS' authority to NOT credit earnings following the Strunk decision, gets the full force of the settlement applied to his benefit, while the second member, who retires 6 months later gets treated as if Strunk never happened, HB 2003 in its original form is still the "law", and the "settlement" is a piece of paper "out there" with no legal import (yet). It seems like attending PERS meetings and reporting on decisions the Board makes is simply a fool's game. PERS and its Board seem to be ruling Al Amok in the same way as the Provisional Authority ran ....