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Committee hears testimony on overtime cap for OPSRP employees and impacts on retirement benefits
Summary
Lawmakers and frontline corrections staff told the Senate Committee on Labor and Business on Feb. 25, 2025, that mandatory overtime and chronic staffing shortages leave many OPSRP (Tier 3) employees accruing hundreds to more than a thousand overtime hours a year while only 300 hours count toward retirement calculations.
Senate Bill 475 drew extended testimony on Feb. 25, 2025 about how overtime hours are calculated for the final average salary of OPSRP (Tier 3) members and whether the current statutory and administrative rules fairly reflect the hours actually worked by public safety and corrections employees.
Sen. James I. Manning Jr. (Senate District 7), one of the bill’s sponsors, said the bill aims to ensure workers who regularly perform hundreds of hours of mandatory overtime receive appropriate credit toward retirement: “When you have a $300 hour cap on Tier 3 and you're working 800 to a thousand hours overtime and not getting any kind of recognition … I think it's a travesty,” Manning told the committee. Rep. Courtney Neuron (House District 26), the chief sponsor of the companion House bill, described frequent ‘‘bucketing’’ and chronic staffing shortages at facilities such as Coffee Creek Correctional Facility and Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, and said many employees routinely log more than 1,000 overtime hours per year.
PERS Senior Policy Advisor Heather Case testified that the agency takes no position on the policy but described administrative impacts. She explained employers may now set overtime caps for employee classes and PERS relies on employer reporting through its EDX system; implementing a standardized, annually adjusted cap as proposed would require employer education, additional reporting, and processing demographic change requests for affected employees. Case said the fiscal cost is indeterminate and will depend on how employers currently calculate caps and how often changes are needed. Several corrections staff and Security Plus employees gave firsthand accounts that mandatory overtime remains pervasive; one witness said staff have worked ‘‘well over 600 to 1,200 hours of overtime in a year.’’
Union leaders and AFSCME testified in support, saying the bill would clarify statutory intent and help retain staff by aligning retirement accrual with actual hours worked. Committee members asked PERS detailed questions about how overtime data are recorded and how long an agency estimate would take; PERS staff indicated they can pull actual hours worked but noted they do not regularly analyze trends across employers. The committee closed the public hearing and indicated it will take further work‑session steps, seeking additional data from DAS and PERS on how many employees are salaried vs. eligible for overtime and the fiscal implications of proposed changes.
