Town halls today to discuss state retirement system changes
Kathy Petrella, a longtime worker in the county clerk of courts office, will retire before changes are made in the Ohio Public Employee Retirement System that would affect her health care.
YOUNGSTOWN
With changes likely to be enacted soon to keep the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System solvent for the long term, town hall meetings will be today to explain those changes to PERS members.
The meetings, to be conducted by members of the retirement system’s staff, will be at 2 and 6 p.m. in McKay Auditorium at Youngstown State University’s Beeghly College of Education.
OPERS, whose trustees recommended the changes, says they are necessary because people are living longer and a large influx of retirees will occur as baby boomers age.
The Ohio Senate unanimously passed the OPERS reform bill, Senate Bill 343, on May 16. That bill is tentatively scheduled for a vote of the full Ohio House of Representatives on Sept. 12.
The new law would take effect 90 days after Gov. John Kasich would sign it, unless an emergency clause is attached to it. No such clause is attached to the bill as it now stands.
“We have received thousands of postcards, petitions, surveys, emails and other forms of written communication from people all across Ohio as a show of support for the recommended changes,” said Julie Graham-Price, communications manager for the retirement system.
“As the bill moves through the legislative process, we are committed to continuing our communications efforts to all our members,” she added.
To achieve full benefits, the new law would require 32 years of service to retire at age 55, or five years of service to retire at 67 for most PERS members.
Current law permits most PERS-covered employees to retire at any age with full benefits after 30 years of work, or at age 65 with five years of service.
Another change would calculate retirement benefits based on the average of the five highest years of salary, instead of the current formula that averages the three highest years.
Yet another change would give retirees a cost-of-living increase in their benefit amounts tied to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, up to a maximum of 3 percent a year, instead of the current automatic 3 percent annual increase in benefits.
For one local OPERS member, these and other proposed changes were a deciding factor in her choice to retire this fall.
Kathy Petrella, 56, of New Middletown, will retire Oct. 1 as a $32,000-a-year bookkeeper in the Mahoning County Clerk of Courts Office after 32 years of service, and her retirement benefit will be about two-thirds of her salary.
Petrella, who has diabetes and fibromyalgia, said another factor is proposed cutbacks in OPERS retiree health care, which she said would impose significant out-of-pocket costs on her.
Instead of covering all her health care costs after co-payments, she said the plan would pay only 90 percent under the proposed health coverage changes being considered by OPERS trustees.
“I’m grandfathered in for 100 percent coverage” with the Oct. 1 retirement date, she said.
Petrella said she reached her decision to retire after she attended a group informational meeting here and after she met face-to-face with an OPERS representative in Columbus, who discussed with her the proposed changes as they would specifically affect her.
Without the proposed changes, OPERS says its retiree health-care plan would run out of money in 14 years.
“I don’t think they’re real drastic,” Petrella said of the proposed state retirement system changes. “They need to come up with a solution so that the retirees are covered so that they do not lose their pensions,” she added.
Petrella observed she knows many retirees from companies that have closed who have suffered pension losses.
OPERS, which is governed by an 11-member board of trustees, covers state, county, municipal, township, state college and university, public library and housing and transit authority employees.