The Call Up

Yesterday I attended the OPRI (Oregon PERS Retirees Inc) Board meeting in Salem. I was a guest of a Board member. Obviously the reason I attended was to get a sense of what OPRI might be planning to do in response to the Oregon Supreme Court's (non) ruling in the City of Eugene case, the OPRI victory in Strunk/Sartain, and PERB's plans to begin implementing the City of Eugene Settlement soon. OPRI heard from its chief lobbyist, Bill Linden, who had met earlier with several of the key attorneys in the litigation. At the present time, he advised OPRI to wait at least 10 days before committing to any of 3 possible actions: 1) do nothing; 2) get involved with the PERS Coalition if the retiree's case can be amended onto the extant White case in Multnomah County, or in any new litigation specifically involving retirees; or 3) pursue an independent legal challenge. The PERS Coalition is studying and researching all possible approaches and plans to make recommendations within the next 10 days or so. In the meantime, OPRI is open to the possibility of further independent litigation, but it was clear to me that it needed some serious financial committment from post-3/1/00 retirees to make this decision easier for the OPRI Board to sign onto. There are somewhere between 29,000 and 47,000 retirees affected by the legal decisions and settlement agreement. Comparatively few of those have either (a) joined OPRI itself or (b) contributed to its legal defense fund.

Whether you are an active PERS members or affected retiree, what OPRI decides to do is (or should be) significant to you. For retirees, the reason is obvious. For actives, the reason may not be so evident. Today's actives are tomorrow's retirees. Any action that OPRI wins on behalf of retirees closes a door for future legislatures to try to take something away from your benefit.

So, I urge active PERS members and most especially post-3/1/00 retirees to join OPRI - dues are only $5 per year ($50 lifetime) and to contribute to OPRI's Legal Defense Fund. Addresses below:

Membership (checks made out to):

OPRI
P.O. Box 7325
Salem, OR 97303-0065

Legal defense fund ( separate checks made out to):

OPRLF
P.O. Box 7325
Salem, OR 97303-0065

If you really want to show your support, join and donate as soon as possible. Make the Board's job easier for them. This is the one place where cash and committment talks.

Also discussed at yesterday's Board meeting is a new direction for the OPRI website. A web-savvy PERS retiree and OPRI member (not me) volunteered to redesign the web site, modernize it, and will be exploring ways to make it possible to search the web site and, hopefully, for potential and current members to be able to join, renew memberships, and to contribute to various funds online. Look for a newly designed OPRI website sometime in mid- to late-September. The entire feature set may not be in place when the new website goes live, but the goal of making it possible to do these things is now established.