AB 2284: County employees’ retirement: compensation.

Existing law, the California Public Employees Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA), generally requires a public retirement system, as defined, to modify its plan or plans to comply with the act. PEPRA, among other things, establishes new defined benefit formulas and caps on pensionable compensation.

The County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 (CERL) authorizes counties to establish retirement systems pursuant to its provisions in order to provide pension benefits to their employees. CERL generally vests management of each retirement system in a board of retirement.

CERL defines compensation earnable by a member, for the purpose of calculating benefits, to mean the average compensation, as determined by the board, for the period under consideration upon the basis of the average number of days ordinarily worked by persons in the same grade or class of positions during the period, and the same rate of pay, subject to certain exceptions.

This bill would authorize a retirement system, to the extent it has not defined grade in the above-described circumstances, to define grade to mean a number of employees considered together because they share similarities in job duties, schedules, unit recruitment requirements, work location, collective bargaining unit, or other logical work-related group or class, as specified. The bill would specify that these provisions shall not become operative in a county until the board of supervisors of that county, by resolution adopted by majority vote, makes the provisions applicable in that county.