COUNTYWIDE : Accord May Be Near on Pension Surplus

County administrators and retirement board officials are close to an agreement over the pension system’s much-coveted, $220-million reserve fund that has been the subject of intense negotiations for several months.

In the proposed 1991-92 budget being considered this week by county supervisors, officials said that an agreement with the retirement board will mean $12.4 million in extra revenue for the county’s general fund.

Murray Cable, assistant county administrative officer, said inclusion of that figure in the budget signals “cautious optimism” that an agreement will soon be final.

“If I’m wrong, then I’ve got to come back to the board and ask them to make more cuts in the budget,” he said.

Patrick Brunner, chairman of the nine-member board that oversees the fund, said the two sides are continuing to meet, but that there is no final agreement.

“We want to come up with an agreement that benefits both the county and the people this system is meant to serve, and it will be a fair and equitable agreement,” he said.

The county contributes about $69 million a year to the pension fund, which serves 16,000 county employees.

At issue is how much the pension system needs to have in its reserve fund and whether the county is obligated to make large contributions when the fund is performing far beyond expectations.

By law, public employee pension systems must maintain a reserve fund of at least 1% of their total assets. Orange County’s pension system keeps more than 13% in reserves, an amount that the county’s auditor-controller recently called “embarrassingly large.”