Public employee benefits: audits.

The Public Employees' Retirement Law (PERL) creates the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS) , which provides a defined benefit to its members based on age at retirement, service credit, and final compensation. PERL authorizes the Board of Administrator of PERS during the course of an audit, to require each state agency, school employer, and contracting agency, to provide information or make available for examination or copying at a specified time and place, or both, books, papers, any data, or records, as deemed necessary by the board to determine the correctness of retirement benefits, reportable compensation, enrollment in, and reinstatement to, this system. The Public Employees' Medical and Hospital Care Act also authorizes the board or an authorized representative to perform audits of each employer and to require the employer to provide information or make available for examination and copying books, papers, data, and records, as specified. This bill would require the board to notify the subject of an audit, before initiating the audit, of the estimated time required to complete the audit. The bill would specify factors upon which the estimate would be based. The bill would authorize the board to assess a reasonable charge upon the employer to recover additional costs incurred for the excess time to complete the audit if an audit requires an excess of the time estimated, except that a contracting agency would not be assessed for delays during the course of an audit that are reasonably outside of the agency's control.