According to data released monday, the top beneficiary of the Oregon public employees retirement system (PERS) is former Oregon football head coach Mike Bellotti.
Bellotti, who retired from the University last year to become an analyst for ESPN, receives a monthly pension of $41,341, an annual total of almost $500,000. He is one of 837 PERS beneficiaries who receive over $100,000 per year. These 837 individuals comprise a mere one percent of the PERS’s 105,000 retirees. PERS pays out a total of $230 million per month in benefits.
The report was received by the Oregonian as a part of a legal settlement between transparency and privacy rights. This first data was released by PERS after Marion county judge, Vance Day, dismissed the last efforts of public employees to block the data from being released.
These figures come just days after an announcement on Thursday that the state will be facing a budget shortfall within this next fiscal year. Economists predict that state tax collections will be more than $300 million below the level lawmakers forecasted they would be when they constructed the budget earlier this year.