A trio of events may prove critical in the ongoing fight between Delphi salaried retirees and the government over the retirees’ pensions.

• This month, attorneys for the retirees will question officials of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., or PBGC, during depositions under oath. The retirees sued the PBGC in federal court more than three years ago after the agency agreed to take on the retirees’ pensions from a then-bankrupt Delphi in July 2009.

• A report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (also called SIGTARP) in its own probe into the matter is expected to be released soon.

• In February, U.S. Reps. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, and Tim Ryan, D-Niles, announced the creation of a congressional task force to unify several committee and sub-committee investigations into the federal government’s treatment of pensions of more than 20,000 retired Delphi managers and engineers.

Retirees have pursued their case for more than three years in court and in the arena of public opinion, while the federal government has consistently stood by its actions.

The dispute became a subject of debate between the November election campaigns of President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The dispute started in 2009 when a then-bankrupt Delphi relinquished pension obligations to the PBGC, a government-supported backstop for private pensions. The PBGC subsequently cut the retirees’ pensions by up to 70 percent.

General Motors, which once owned Delphi and remains an important Delphi auto parts customer, paid hourly retirees to ensure they received their full pensions, spending $1 billion even though GM went through its own bankruptcy stint in 2009.

Salaried retirees want the same consideration, and 4,500 of them have invested $3.5 million in their federal lawsuit against the PBGC. Officials for the PBGC and the Obama administration say the agency and administration have followed the law.

“We’re doing really, really well, despite all their resistance,” said Washington Twp. resident and Delphi management retiree Tom Rose. “My standard question is, ‘If you haven’t done anything wrong, what are you hiding?’”

White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said “the decisions surrounding the Delphi salaried pension plan were made by the PBGC in accordance with its standard procedures and applicable laws, not by the White House or the Treasury Department.

“Although the Delphi bankruptcy was very difficult for its employees and retirees, the actions the administration took to support the American auto industry helped save more than a million American jobs during a period of economic crisis and saved an entire American industry,” Brundage said.

There are about 2,000 local Delphi retirees affected by the pension cuts, Rose, 66, has estimated. He added that more than 800 Delphi Salaried Retirees Association members in the Dayton area.

The retirees regard the depositions as crucial. .

“They’re under oath,” said Springboro resident Tom Green, 63, who once managed the former Delphi plant on Needmore Road. “We finally get the chance to ask them whatever questions that we choose, and they have to answer.”

Rose declined to identify which PBGC officials will be deposed.

The Inspector General’s report could shed light on whether and how the government shepherded General Motors’ and Delphi’s decisions dealing with retiree pensions. The office has already said in a May 2012 letter to Turner and other lawmakers that it “believes that the (federal) Auto Task Force played a role in the pension decision.”

The former Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry advised the president on auto-related matters and reviewed the restructuring of both General Motors and Chrysler, which also went through bankruptcy in 2009.

Retirees and their allies contend that government agencies release documents and information only slowly and grudgingly. At other times, they say, reams of irrelevant information are released, a tactic that forces hours of fruitless searches.

Last September, attorneys for the PBGC rejected the idea of non-binding mediation between the agency and the retirees — after initially seeming open to the idea, according to the legal liaison for the retirees.

A spokesman for the PBGC declined to answer questions, but released a prepared statement that said, “The Delphi salaried retirees want to enter into talks to try to reach a settlement in which PBGC would pay them more in benefits than federal law allows. That’s something we legally can’t do.”

The retirees have heard that argument and reject it.

“They can have GM do it for us (restore our pensions),” Greene said. “They can have the new (post-bankruptcy) Delphi do it.”

The retirees fight with urgency because the dispute has already taken nearly four years and could take still more years to resolve — years not all the retirees may have. That frustrates Marlane Bengry, 63, a Delphi salaried retiree who lives in Bellbrook.

“My taxes go to fight my own lawyers,” Bengry said. “It’s bizarre.”

The former auto task force has quietly ended its daily work. But Turner, an advocate for the retirees, said he believes the PBGC is feeling increasingly vulnerable.

“I think we’re going to see some great revelations coming out,” he said.

Sen. Sherrod Brown has not reintroduced in the current Congress legislation that would have the federal government sell shares of GM in order to raise funds to make the salaried pensions whole, said Lauren Kulik, a spokeswoman for Brown. That legislation was first introduced in September, in the previous Congress. Asked about the prospect of introducing the bill anew, Kulik said the senator remains involved with the retirees.

Brown and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., wrote last week to Josh Gotbaum, PBGC director, asking Gotbaum to provide a “timetable” on when the PBGC will issue “final benefit determinations” for all Delphi retirees, salaried and hourly.

New retirees received estimated PBGC benefits in late 2009 while current retirees were slated to start receiving adjustments the next year. Final calculations of benefits continue, Brown’s office said.