County employees’ retirement: cost-of-living adjustments

The law gives Sonoma County a process to address retirees’ loss of purchasing power while requiring the county to identify recipients, costs, and funding before acting.

What the law does ​

• Allows the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to authorize annual cost-of-living adjustments for retirement, optional death, and annual death allowances.
• Requires the board to work with the retirement board to identify eligible recipients or a subset of recipients, set the adjustment amount, and identify its funding source.
• Requires an enrolled actuary’s statement of future annual cost impacts.
• Allows the board to limit an adjustment to recipients whose purchasing-power loss meets a threshold it sets, using local Consumer Price Index changes and prior adjustments.
• Makes an approved adjustment part of the allowance for future cost-of-living calculations, without guaranteeing future increases or retroactive payments.

Who it affects ​

• Retired Sonoma County employees receiving retirement allowances.
• Survivors, beneficiaries, and successors receiving eligible death allowances.
• Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors and retirement board.

Context ​

The law applies only to Sonoma County.