The Associated Press

TIGARD - A recent Oregon Supreme Court ruling that struck down some of the 2003 Legislature's reforms to the public pension system will shift $2.1 billion to public employees in the next 25 years, officials said Tuesday.

The court overturned reforms that suspended recent retirees' cost-of-living adjustments, and modified the annual 8 percent earnings guarantee on the regular accounts of members who joined PERS before 1996.

The PERS Board may be able to use up to $1.8 billion in reserves to cover most of the costs of the ruling, Paul Cleary, the pension fund's executive director, told the Statesman Journal on Tuesday.

But workers and retirees won't see that money for at least several months, because of a separate pending Supreme Court case that could result in reductions to worker and retiree pensions.

As a result, the PERS Board agreed Tuesday to delay distributing $5.8 billion in the pension fund's investment earnings from 2004, until that decision is handed down.

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Information from: Statesman Journal, http://www.statesmanjournal.com