From my State of the County address last month:

When the legislature passed PERS reform in 2013, our financial, legal and Human Resources staff recommended to the Board that we set aside the projected savings in a reserve account because of the potential for those reforms to be overturned in the courts. In addition, that same staff had bonded some of our PERS liability when interest rates were low and nearly fully funded our liability. 

This higher level of funding directly impacts the rate that Lane County is charged to cover PERS expenses for our employees. While other public employers in Oregon, with less than 80 percent of their PERS liability funded, saw their rates raise by as much as 6 percentage points in FY 15- 16, Lane County experienced an increase of just 1.8 percentage points for the same time period. If we had experienced a 6 percentage point increase, it would have cost Lane County an additional $3.3 million dollars annually.