Legislature Looking to Reform PERs

Oregon lawmakers are going to have to make tough decisions this session. One of the areas they plan to tackle is PERs - the Public Employment Retirement System and how to prevent it from busting the State budget. State Representative Jason Conger says several options are being discussed: “To have employees picking up their 6%; that would make a dent in the PERs liability. Another that I’ve heard talked about is to increase the retirement age for PERs eligible employees; so that that they were cutting back some of the benefits that they would receive and furthering it our a little bit later.” Conger is optimistic some legislation will pass concerning PERs, but he's not sure what form it will take.