July 10, 2003

The public employees retirement system, PERS is for all public employees. It was created in 1947 to insure government employees had a retirement plan. At that time, the Social Security system did not allow participation by all government employees.

Most participants in PERS are not state employees. PERS also covers employees in counties, school districts, the university system, hospitals, improvement districts, volunteer fire departments and many more. It has about 85,000 members.

The retirement fund has not lost money in the past 10 years. It has made over 6 percent. The PERS goal is 8 percent but this has been difficult recently.

The additional money going into the fund is to make it actuarially sound so it can pay future benefits. Both the employer and its employees pay into the fund for this. Right now employees pay 9.75 percent of their salary into the system. Those paying into social security pay a maximum rate of 6.2 percent for income to $87,000.

Insuring a financially sound retirement plan is a good thing. Maybe congress and those paying into social security should think about this as well. Take off the salary cap and increase the contribution rate and maybe social security can be financially sound.