Oregon Retirees v Public Employees Retirement System
Public Employee Retirement System Overpayments Leads to Lawsuit
More than 20,000 retired Oregon public employees would be protected from having to reimburse the state pension fund for past "overpayments" into their pension accounts, under a recently filed class-action lawsuit.
The suit challenges a recent decision by the Public Employees Retirement System Board to recoup the money from the retirees by making reductions in their monthly checks.
Most of the reductions won't kick in until they can be offset by annual cost-of-living increases of 2 percent. At stake is hundreds of millions of dollars granted to those who left public service between April 1, 2000, and March 31, 2004.
PERS agreed to recover money from those retirees after Marion Circuit Judge Paul Lipscomb ruled that the system put too much money into worker pension accounts from the pension fund's 1999 investment earnings.
Retirees still argue the notion that there were overpayments or that they should pay them back.
