The RPEI is here because our retirement benefit isn’t keeping up with the cost of living. Inflation is ravaging the value of the PERSI retirement we and our employers paid into. From August 2019 to August 2024, inflation totaled 22.7%, while our cumulative Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) was only 8%. We lost 14.7% in purchasing power.

Our benefit once protected us from inflation. Long-term PERSI retirees remember regular increases to their benefit that kept up with inflation, albeit sometimes with a delay followed by a retroactive COLA. Those COLAs ended on October 27, 2020, when PERSI announced it would stop trying to provide full inflation-protected COLAs. Going forward, in all likelihood, we will receive only the statutory 1% increase, far less than the average 3% rate of inflation.

PERSI previously promised an annual COLA. The PERSI BENEFITS AT A GLANCE publication (FLY0906) said, “To help benefits keep pace with inflation, the Base Plan offers annual COLAs to all retirees. Without COLAs, inflation could dramatically reduce the value of your benefit over time.”

Given PERSI’s poor return on investment and the Board’s October 27, 2020, decision to use different funding guidelines, the value of our benefit will continue to decline. For example, inflation could erode the value of your 2020 benefit by 28% in just 10 years.

The PERSI Board is responsible for administering the plan. However, there are no PERSI retirees on the Board. Further, the Board currently does not take testimony at its meetings. As a result, 56,000 PERSI retirees and contingent annuitants have no voice in the direction or decisions of the retirement fund which they paid into their entire public service careers.

Retiree input is important to ensure that all PERSI Board recommendations and actions accurately reflect the needs of retirees, present and future.

We formed the RPEI to be a unified voice for PERSI retirees and their contingent annuitants, to work cooperatively with the Idaho legislature and the PERSI Board to protect retiree benefits. Promises should be kept. Retirees should be heard, and the inflation-protected benefit that PERSI previously advertised, promoted, and provided should be reinstated.