The Oregon Legislature, it seems, is not averse to reform of the Public Employees Retirement System.

House Bill 4046, a bipartisan measure sponsored, in part, by Rep. Gene Whisnant, R-Sunriver, and Knute Buehler, R-Bend, took just over two weeks to make it through the state House and sits on the Senate president’s desk. Moreover, House members approved it by 52 votes, with 8 not voting.

The bill won’t fix all of PERS’ problems, to be sure. But it does plug the sort of loophole that raises the public’s blood pressure every time it comes up.

We’ve called it the “Mike Bellotti Pension Reform Act” in the past, because the former University of Oregon football coach is the most visible former public employee to benefit from the system, although hardly the only one.

Among others, a retired Oregon Health & Science University professor tops the list with PERS payments of more than $663,000 each year.

Under law, Bellotti and other employees of the state’s public universities, community colleges and OHSU can increase PERS retirement benefits by counting as part of their salaries money they earn away from and unconnected to their jobs. That includes everything from fees for public speaking to grants received for research.

Thus, Bellotti is able to collect more than $547,000 annually in PERS benefits on a salary pegged at $1.3 million. That despite the fact that UO paid him only $299,000 in annual salary.

HB 4046 won’t mean a cut in benefits for Bellotti or any other PERS recipients.

What it will do is ensure that neither football coaches nor other public employees in the state will be able to count as salary, as Bellotti was able to do, the value of endorsements by Nike and incentives on the sales of tickets by the Oregon Sports Network.

The number doing so is relatively small, no doubt, and ending the practice will not dramatically erase the unfunded liability of more than $25 billion that every school district, city, state and other public agency is on the hook for. It is, however, a tiny step worth taking.