Court Opinion

ID: 9503367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:43:12.755479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:25.117833
License: Public Domain

BALMER, J.,
concurring.
I join in each aspect of the majority’s analysis and disposition of these proceedings, including those that follow from this court’s decision in Oregon State Police Officers’ Assn. v. State of Oregon, 323 Or 356, 918 P2d 765 (1996) (OSPOA). We appropriately have declined to revisit the questions of statutory interpretation and legislative intent that OSPOA addressed and decided. Our respect for that precedent, however, should not be misread as an endorsement of either the result or the reasoning in that case.
To the contrary, in my view, the court in OSPOA lost sight of the polestar of statutory contractual analysis: clear, unambiguous, and unmistakable promissory intent. See Hughes v. State of Oregon, 314 Or 1, 17, 838 P2d 1018 (1992) (“a contract will not be inferred from * * * legislation unless it unambiguously expresses an intention to create a contract”); Campbell et al. v. Aldrich et al., 159 Or 208, 213-14, 79 P2d 257 (1938) (legislature’s intention “to create contractual obligations * * * must clearly and unmistakably appear”; surrender of legislative control over vital public matters “cannot be established by mere implication”). Having lost that bearing, the court in OSPOA proceeded to misconstrue the “assumed interest rate” provision of ORS 238.255 — a patently administrative provision intended to smooth fluctuations in PERS fund earnings — as both a material and a perpetual aspect of the PERS contract. See OSPOA, 323 Or at 377-78 (construing “assumed interest rate” provision). Oregon’s public employers and taxpayers must live with the effect of OSPOA’s error for some time to come. Our appropriate respect for stare decisis in the interpretation of statutes, and more particularly of statutory contracts on which public employees have relied, compels as much. OSPOA, however,, ought not have any more vitality than that.
I concur.