BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Lawmakers have rewritten the rules for how the state's retirement systems will offer pension payment increases to retirees.

They agreed to give one final 1.5 percent cost of living adjustment to about 100,000 retired workers under the current rules. But then lawmakers also made it more difficult to get such COLAs in the future, in an effort to pay toward the multibillion-dollar retirement debt.

Rep. Joel Robideaux's bill to revamp the COLA rules was given final passage by the state Senate this week and awaits action from Gov. Bobby Jindal, who supports it.

When the retirement systems have better-than-expected investment gains, more of that money will be steered to pay debt, instead of pension benefit increases, until the systems are better-funded.

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