The fiscal sorcery of Oregon’s state retirement system is putting the squeeze on all the state’s other priorities.

Want more money for schools, roads or public safety?

You need to support reform of Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System.

The system’s unfunded liabilities are at about $16 billion. That means Oregon owes $16 billion it doesn’t have to future beneficiaries. Your share of the debt comes to about $4,200.

Employers with PERS — schools, local governments and the state — already started paying more into PERS last year and will likely be paying more again next year, squeezing their services of $1 billion.

There are good ideas out there for taming PERS costs. But the problem has not been the lack of ideas. The problem is there has been a lack of political will to act on them. Only a few of Oregon’s leaders have been showing the will.

Former Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, made some PERS improvements with help from then-state Rep. Tim Knopp of Bend, a Republican. State Treasurer Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, recently advocated for specific solutions. State Rep. Jason Conger, R-Bend, led a fight to get some reforms through the Legislature.

Last week, Knute Buehler, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, listed six reforms he vowed to support.

Here are Buehler’s six:

1. Eliminate the Oregon income tax benefit for PERS retirees who live out of state. The state compensates them for a tax liability they do not pay. Savings to the state could be $72 million per biennium.

2. Restrict double dipping. Buehler wants to put stricter limits on employees who retire, start collecting PERS and then return to their old jobs to work on contract.

3. Cap the COLA. Cost-of-living adjustments for PERS recipients are capped at 2 percent for some. Others can get a 2-percent COLA even in years when the Consumer Price Index is lower.

4. Reduce the guaranteed rate of return on employee accounts. It is currently set at 8 percent for Tier 1 PERS employees. The actual rate of return on PERS investments has been below 5 percent in the last five years. Buehler advocates decoupling the guaranteed rate of return from the assumed earnings rate. By decoupling, he says, the guaranteed rate of return could be lowered without requiring local government contributions to increase.

5. Redirect the employee contributions of Tier 1 and Tier 2 employees back into the PERS fund. That would reduce the system’s unfunded liability.

6. Remove the conflict of interest for state elected officials. Buehler wants to prohibit legislators who aren’t already employed by a PERS contributing employer from joining PERS.

If you want more money for schools, roads or public safety, Oregon needs leaders who refuse to let PERS reform slide.