While the Ventura County Board of Supervisors is willing to admit that the exorbitant cost of employee entitlements is draining the county budget, the board isn’t ready to reduce pension plans for county workers.

In its response to a grand jury report released in June on the fiscal health of the county’s retirement plan, the board concurred with most of the findings but stopped short of agreeing to any of the sweeping changes proposed by the grand jury.

The grand jury investigation predicted that if left unchecked, the high cost of pensions would threaten the county’s ability to pay for basic programs and services.

“We’re not in as bad shape as we could be, but I think throughout the nation and I think globally we are all seeing what is happening to investments,” said Supervisor Linda Parks, who represents Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Oak Park.

The board agreed that pension costs are stressing the county’s budget and that future pension costs are projected to increase significantly. For this reason, the board also agreed that it should continue its moratorium on increases in pension benefits.

However, the board didn’t agree with the grand jury’s recommendation that for new hires the current benefit pension plan should be replaced with a combination of reduced defined benefits and adjusted defined contributions—similar to the way that benefits are calculated in the private sector.

In addition, the board said cutting benefits during a recession might not be an appropriate longterm solution because it could put the county at a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining public safety personnel.

However, the board’s collective response is not policy, and each supervisor has his or her own take on the issue. Supervisor Peter Foy, for example, disagreed that the switch would result in the county becoming uncompetitive.

“I still believe we have to move off the defined benefits plan to a defined contribution plan . . . that does not incur long-term debt to the county,” said Foy, who represents Simi Valley and Moorpark. “If we’re going to provide pension benefits, we have to provide pension benefits with the money we have when we give it.”

Annual pension costs are affected by several factors, including the number of active and retired employees in the plan, the compensation of active employees and the life expectancy of retirees.

The pension fund’s assets are also susceptible to large swings in value based on investment performance and the granting of retirement benefits.

While she doesn’t believe the county can or should go back on established contracts, Parks said the board is looking for ways to rein in compensation.

“We are looking at the potential for lower reduced benefit packages for future employees, absolutely,” she said.

The board also didn’t agree with the grand jury’s suggestion to place a proposition on the next countywide election ballot to require voter approval for increases in retirement benefits.

Local jurisdictions that recently put similar propositions on the ballot—such as Orange County’s Proposition J in the 2008 election—only did so after granting substantial benefit increases, the board stated in its official response.

“The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has taken a strong position against enhancing retirement benefits and has not required the backstop of requiring voter approval to take this position,” said the supervisors’ response.

The board members did say that it could be advantageous to look into the proposal as a longterm control of pension costs.

But Foy thinks it’s worth looking into now. Since taxpayers, he said, are the ones paying for public employee pensions, they should be able to vote on whether they want to take on that debt. Foy said his office would be bringing a proposal to that effect to the board, probably next month.

The board agreed with the grand jury that the Ventura County Employee Retirement Association (VCERA) should rethink how it utilizes excess county earnings, which in the past have been used to provide additional benefits or offset members’ contributions.

VCERA manages the pension plan for more than 13,000 current active and retired employeesBenefits are determined by negotiations between the county and employee unions.

The board said it believes all excess earnings should be retained in VCERA’s retirement fund because spending excess funds in good years requires additional county contributions to make up for deficiencies in bad years.

Parks said it is prudent financial planning to save for “rainy days.”

“We have to have a long-term view when we’re making decisions regarding employee compensations, realizing you are going to be paying the piper in the end,” Parks said. “It’s not always going to be good times, so instead of increasing benefits in good times, you have to save them for the bad times. “Those two things, I thinkwould go far in avoiding upsidedown pension funds,” she addedThe board response noted that VCERA isn’t required to grant additional benefits from excess earnings and that it could eliminate all non-vested supplemental benefits that it has granted. The board said it would support such a move, as well as legislation eliminating the ability for retirement boards to award benefits above those granted by the Board of Supervisors.

“We made a contract with somebody . . . and it wasn’t to say we’ll give you more later,” Foy said. “If we’re going to spend it at all, we should return it to the taxpayer or return it to the system to reduce what the taxpayer has to pay.”

However, in its response to the grand jury’s recommendations, VCERA said decisions involving excess earnings are held to a “fiduciary standard and are determined in the context of the Board of Retirement’s duty of loyalty to all plan participants.”

The association said it wouldn’t pursue legislation that could potentially have an adverse impact on some or all of its members.