William, you need to go to the PERS website and do research.   PERS has changed many times and each time it reduced the future retirement amounts of existing employees.  Let's use your example.  That person was impacted by the PERS changes in 2003.  Those changes diverted about half the pension contributions to an IAP (like a 401k).  The result is that the employee will certainly not get the Money Match calculation that is the cause of the very large pensions everyone is crying about.  That person will get Full Formula and likely a pension that pays 50% of his ending salary plus whatever their IAP is worth and that varies based on actual market returns.  If the legislature diverts those IAP contributions (what this article is about) then the IAP will be small.  So your example employee has had his pension reduced by the 2003 changes, the 2013 COLA changes and possible the proposed 2017 changes.  The big retirement packages are almost all Tier 1 Money Match and those are fewer and fewer