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In the 2006 legislative session, our retirement security came under a severe attack. Colorado public pension funds were temporarily reduced by the 2001 stock market crash. But even though the PERA system had already begun to recover, some elected officials pushed for privatizing the PERA fund. They offered legislation to abolish our guaranteed pension and replace it with a plan dependent on risky stock market investments. Because of the efforts of public employees, we were able to block these attempts. We also blocked other attempts to cut benefits for new employees.

The State Legislature instead passed a bill to improve PERA funding and make other changes to the PERA plan and Board. The bill was not perfect, but it preserved our guaranteed pensions, and did not cut new employee benefits. This bill was signed into law by Governor Owens.

Equally significant, once the bill passed the anti-public employee group seeking to take away our secure retirement withdrew the ballot initiative that would have privatized our pensions.

In order to improve the financial condition of PERA, the bill passed by the state legislature requires a supplemental employer contribution of 0.5% per year for six years, beginning in 2008. This measure will return the plan to fiscal soundness.

Along with Boulder County, members of the Boulder County Employee Organizing Committee/SEIU and SEIU staff worked to improve the bill by amending it to account for the fact that the local government division of PERA is in better financial shape than the other divisions.

An amendment to fix this problem was defeated in the State House of Representatives. This amendment would have made the bill fairer for local governments.

The representatives from Boulder County – Reps. Jack Pommer, Paul Weissmann, Tom Plant and Alice Madden – all supported the amendment (these representatives have all also supported County employees freedom to form a union).

The amendment offered by Rep. Massey and supported by Boulder County and SEIU would have protected the financial soundness of each division’s plan, but allowed the supplemental contributions to stop earlier than they would in the current bill. Under the amendment, it would be likely that the supplemental contribution for local governments would have ended after the first year or two, given current projections. This would mean an increase of only 0.5 or 1.0 percent, instead of up to 3 percent.

Since the amendment did not succeed, the bill that was passed requires all divisions to contribute the same additional amounts to the PERA fund.

We still have time to try to resolve this issue before the additional employer contributions begin in July, 2007, as required in the bill.

Go to
Important Information About PERA
to send a message to your representatives on the PERA board about this issue.