Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) has been gasping for air, trying to stay afloat for years. It took a major dunking again in 2022, swallowing another $8 billion of added debt into its beleaguered balance sheet. The fund currently is about $28 billion short of the funds necessary to pay for its pension obligation to retirees. The escalation of the debt has been staggering. PERS was fully funded as recently as 2007.

If PERS was a financial institution, federal regulators would have dissolved it and placed the assets into receivership long ago. Liabilities exceed assets. It is, under federal definition, insolvent.

This short session, while most eyes are focused on the fate of Measure 110 and the governor’s ambitious homebuilding agenda, the Legislature is quietly advancing HB 4045. The bill will add a little to that debt burden, but more significantly, take steps that may eventually drown it completely.

First, a little history. In 1956 the Legislature recognized that the brave men and women who climb ladders into burning buildings or face the prospect of violence from gun- and knife-toting criminals deserved additional retirement benefits to those offered other public employees. Firefighters and police were ultimately given a special classification all their own to properly distinguish their physically demanding service and would receive a 20% bonus in their future retirement checks. Legislators thought they had crafted the classification narrowly and tightly.

Today, there are 25 groups of employees in various occupations now shoehorned in as police and firefighter beneficiaries who receive the 20% pension bump, some of whose physical stress amounts to nothing more than occasional shoulder strain from carrying a briefcase to the office and back. They have retired as food services coordinators, facility maintenance workers, attorneys, and workers for Oregon’s liquor distribution and control agency. This session, the Legislature appears poised to add elected district attorneys. With prosecuting attorneys being locked into the pension boost, expect lobbyists for public defenders demanding their inclusion using the equity argument during the next session.

However, PERSdora’s Box is lurking in Section 2 (7), and after sailing through the committee with little concerns expressed, the Legislature may be about to unwittingly crack it open.

To help improve morale, recruitment and retention at the Oregon State Hospital, legislators are considering providing that 20% pension bonus to those employees. However, due to federal definitions they are unable to squeeze them in with the police and fire classification. This also applies to 911 operators, who face difficulty in recruiting personnel due to the emotional stress inherent in that position.

The proposed solution is to create an entirely new classification knows as employees in a “Hazardous Position,” defined in the legislation as jobs that carry “high risk of physical harm or manage emergency or traumatic events.” This newly created classification is to include 911 operators and Oregon State Hospital employees only.

Legislators may want to review the history of when police and firefighters were the only employees in that classification. If past is prologue, the effect of a hazardous position classification could make other pension bonus obligations, and the pressure on PERS debt pale by comparison. Once a benefit is granted, Oregon courts have made clear the Legislature can’t later claim a do-over.

In the sessions ahead, nurses, doctors, and social workers from OHSU and the Oregon Health Authority may come forward demanding inclusion. They can show that the U.S. Department of Labor lists nursing as one of the top five occupations for sustaining injuries and another report showing workplace violence against health care workers has nearly doubled since 2010.

Election workers, beleaguered by increasing political unrest, can demonstrate the escalating threats and acts of violence and harassment. How about ODOT workers who face the hazards of careless drivers while performing their duties on our roadways? Park rangers and forest service employees can face dangerous situations in the field. Then there is the largest class of workers of all, nearly 30,000 public school teachers who can point to studies showing that almost 8% of teachers have either been assaulted or threatened with bodily harm by students.

Hearing rooms will be packed with potential beneficiaries, stories told, studies presented, legislators squeezed. What was once thought to be a narrowly crafted exception may metastasize into something much more challenging.

The Legislature is right to address the important challenges faced at our state hospital and our critical 911 support network. Perhaps it is best to take a step back on that piece of the legislation, re-engineer the approach and move forward in the 2025 session when greater scrutiny can be applied, lest it release a flood of statutory consequences they will never be able to rein back in.