Carbon County Retirement Board is increasing the interest rates on member accounts.

During the monthly meeting of the board last week, officials voted to set the 2015 interest rate on members' accounts at 5.5 percent. Last year, the interest rate was set at 4.5 percent.Before the vote, Robert Crampsie, county controller and secretary to the retirement board, explained his recommendation for the increase. By law, counties are required to set the interest rate between 4 and 5.5 percent.From 1992 to 2009, the county set the interest rate at 5.5 percent, Crampsie said. When the economy took a hit in 2008 and the county started seeing big annual required contribution payments into the retirement fund, the interest rate steadily dropped down to 4 percent."During the last five years, the average paid on members' accounts was 4.2 percent," Crampsie said. "During that same time period, our (retirement) fund averaged a return of 13.18 percent, so we ended up getting 9 percent on members' account."He said that looking at the members' account balance as of Jan. 1, 2014, which was $13.7 million, each year the county received $1.2 million of excess interest on those accounts."We're talking about $6 million more than went into the fund due to the excess interest we got," Crampsie said. "So in looking at that, it would be a fair time to increase the interest rate back to 5.5 percent."Following the action, the board also decided that it will forgo giving a cost-of-living increase to retirees in 2015.The reason is because even though the fund is performing well, current legislation would require the county to retroactively give increases for years that none were given.Based on the legislation, Crampsie said that it would cost the county up to $2.6 million if a cost-of-living increase was approved."We would like to be able to give a cost-of-living raise," he said. "When you're not able to do it for a few years it becomes more and more difficult to do it because of the legislation though."In other matters, the county retirement portfolio is performing well.The fund, as of Nov. 30, stood at $75,182,652, up $865,703 from the end of October.