School districts, cities, counties and other public employers in Oregon have tried to ease the financial burden of the state’s retirement system for public employees.

But PERS — Public Employees Retirement System — seems always to return, like the implacable villain in a slasher film.

And the system’s appetite for public dollars is insatiable.

Oregon lawmakers have an obligation when they convene in January for the 2025 session to take action to help public agencies, which aren’t responsible for PERS’ inherent problems but are left to deal with the effects.

In particular the legislature should allocate more money to public schools to at least partially offset an increase in PERS costs, for the two-year period starting July 1, 2025, that for some districts could be ruinous.

Some have already had to cut costs due to PERS.

The Grant School District in Grant County, for instance, recently laid off the district’s secretary and the principal for Grant Union Jr./Sr. High School in anticipation of an $800,000 increase in the district’s PERS bill next year.

Although the Baker School District probably has sufficient cash reserves to absorb its projected PERS boost of more than $2 million without cutting staff or programs, those dollars will disappear into the PERS maw, unavailable to benefit students.

The La Grande, Hermiston and Pendleton school districts also have significant projected hikes in their PERS costs.

The PERS scourge dates back more than 40 years.

Legislators, who are themselves PERS members, created a retirement system so ridiculous in its generosity that even private sector union bosses might be embarrassed to suggest such a scheme.

Although lawmakers did away with the system’s most egregious aspects with reforms more than 20 years ago, the financial burden continues because tens of thousands of retirees with the most inflated pensions — those hired before 1996 — continue to receive their bloated monthly checks.

To cite a particularly obnoxious example, some PERS members were guaranteed a minimum 8% return on their accounts, even if the system lost money.

(Of course if the yields exceeded that figure, public employees received the full amount. This partially explains why some retirees earn more now than they did while working.)

State officials adjust PERS rates — how much of their payroll public employers such as school districts pay into the system — every two years. Rates fluctuate depending on PERS’ investment returns.

The projected increases that are already resulting in school budget cuts are exacerbated by the expiration of so-called “side accounts” that many districts — including Grant and Baker — created in 2002 to reduce the financial pain inflicted by PERS by selling bonds, with the proceeds used to reduce the PERS bill.

Rising interest rates make side accounts a less attractive option now.

Many school districts, including Baker and Grant, will be spending more than 20% of their payroll costs not on employees — those who are teaching students and doing other vital work in our schools — but to feed PERS.

In Oregon, where lawmakers and other elected officials frequently bemoan the performance of public schools, this is not acceptable. Ideally, of course, when the legislature allocates more money to schools those dollars go directly to classrooms.

PERS, unfortunately, takes its cut first.

But lawmakers, by bolstering the state school budget, can at least ensure that districts don’t descend deeper into the PERS morass.