Wyoming retirees propose profit-sharing plan to fund modest postretirement increases

A coalition of retired public employees and their advocates told the Wyoming Joint Appropriations Committee that retirees need relief after 18 years without a cost-of-living adjustment.

John Emerick, a 35-year retiree from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, told the committee that the average retiree pension is about $22,000 a year and that inflation has sharply eroded purchasing power. "With the erosion of inflation over the last 18 years, it's pretty tough for people to... have a real comfortable life at all," Emerick said.

Kevin Reddy, president of the Federated Firefighters of Wyoming and chair of the Wyoming Coalition for a Healthy Retirement, offered a detailed proposal that ties postretirement increases to investment performance rather than automatically granting a COLA. Under the coalition's framework, if a plan exceeds the assumed rate of return (currently 6.8%) by 1% (about $130 million in excess, by the figures Reddy cited), every retiree would receive a 1% benefit: a compounding COLA for plans over 100% funded and a one-time "thirteenth check" for plans funded between 80% and 100%.

Reddy walked lawmakers through staged thresholds: a 2% excess would trigger larger, age-weighted increases for more-tenured retirees; a 3% excess would trigger still larger benefits for those retired longer. He emphasized the coalition's priority is to preserve the long-term funding path toward 100% and to avoid jeopardizing the corpus: "First and foremost, the priority of the coalition is that we maintain the path towards a 100% funding," he said.

AARP Wyoming supported continued work on options to mitigate inflation's effects, noting that since the last COLA the cost of many necessities has risen sharply. Tom Laycock, associate state director for AARP Wyoming, told the committee that predictable, prefunded COLAs are a policy objective to preserve retirees' purchasing power.

Several legislators asked the coalition and the Wyoming Retirement System for actuarial scenarios comparing 1%, 2% and 3% benefit models over multi-decade horizons. Representative Sherwood and others said they wanted detailed math showing how those options would affect fund trajectories and employer/employee contributions.

The committee did not take any formal action on the coalition's proposal at the hearing. Members requested follow-up material — scenario modeling, totals by cohort and the specific mechanics for compounding versus noncompounding payments — before considering policy changes.

What happens next: Coalition leaders and legislative staff agreed to provide the committee with more detailed actuarial scenarios and a written outline of implementation options for consideration during interim work and the 2027 session.