Preliminary Legislation Report
Special Note:
Because of the way the Legislative/Funding Process and
Georgia General Assembly is set up, any legislation that has any financial impact
must be introduced and favorably acted upon in the first year of the legislative
cycle, a fiscal study (Fiscal Note) be performed by the Office of Audits, and final
action (Approval/Rejection) in the second year. As we are in the second
year of the two year funding cycle, most action taken will be on legislation
introduced last year.
There are numerous bills in both the House and Senate that
are being watched by the GDOTEA and your Association is actively engaged in
discussions with legislators regarding this legislation and the condition of
the Employees Retirement System. Attempts being made by the current
legislature that we feel will have adverse impacts on ERS and employees.
Our lobbyist and numerous legislators have warned that this will be a very hard
year for retirement issues.
A “new” New Retirement System appears to be inevitable.
The Governor’s office and other administration officials are working very
hard to see that this happens. We have been advised this system will
require new employees hired after a certain date (example: 1 July 2008) contribute
to a 401(k) type account where contributions are held and managed by the
employee. This is a called a Defined Contribution Plan where current
employees are in a Defined Benefit Plan that provides a guaranteed monthly
income (based on a retirement formula) upon retirement. The Defined
Contribution Plan does not provide a guaranteed retirement income as its
earnings are determined by many factors (i.e., employee contribution rate, volatility
market performance over the life of the plan, type of investments chosen by the
contributor, retirement payout, etc.). Your GDOTEA has opposed this
Defined Contribution Plan from the first early discussions many years ago.
This past summer the Board of Trustees proposed eliminating
the winter portion of the annual COLA (Cost of living adjustment) for the
current retirees under the “State Employee” portion of ERS. While
ERS is an umbrella system comprised of several subcomponent units (State
Employees, Public School Employees [school custodians, school lunch room
workers, school bus drivers, NOT Teachers], Judicial Employees, and Legislative
Employees) only the state employee component was a target of the elimination of
COLA’s. The GDOTEA, GSRA (Georgia State Retirees Association), and
individual retirees contacted legislators to express their concerns. The
COLA’s were subsequently approved but only for .5%, rather than the normal
1.5%. The summer portion of the COLA was approved for 1.5%. The legislator
will be asked to set the COLA % in law, as it is now subject to approval of the
Board Of Trustees of the Retirement System.
Until this past year, GDOTEA been pretty much alone in the
fight to improve Condition of Employment and Retirement Issues. Over the
past year, an organization has been formed that will be instrumental in the
fight to address retirement issues with us. This group is GSRA, or
Georgia State Retirees Association. The executive leadership is made up
of past employees like Claude Vickers (past Director of the Office of Audits
and Fiscal Procedures) Bill Tomlinson (past Director of the Legislative Budget
Office), and Bobbie Jean Bennett (past Commissioner of the Georgia Merit System
- now State Personnel Office or SPA). These individuals are uniquely
experienced in the fiscal and actuarial processes involved with retirement
system funding. There is no greater accumulation of knowledge to speak to
the issues ahead of us as these individuals and as a group we can benefit
greatly through cooperation with them. We would encourage each of you to
visit their website: http://www.mygsra.com/mc/page.do.
As retirees they are able to address many issues in a manner that we, as active
employees could not.
Below are a list of links we will be using to follow
information as it passes through the legislative process, please feel free to make
yourself familiar with this information.
House Retirement Committee Webpage:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/house/Committees/Retirement/retirementIndex.htm
This page also has contact information (Name, address, phone
number, e-mail, etc.) for each committee member for our members use in
contacting members on retirement legislation.
House Retirement Committee Legislation Website:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/com/gahret.htm
The House Retirement Committee is scheduled to meet every
Wednesday during the session, if there is no agenda item for discussion the
meeting will be cancelled. An archive of past Retirement Committee
Meeting video tape can be found at: http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/house/Committees/Retirement/retArchives.htm
If you will review the 1/16/08 Meeting Video, you’ll
see that CFO Tommy Hills is either very uneducated regarding Fulltime Temporary
Employment – he doesn’t understand that Fulltime = 8 hours/day or
he is intentionally trying to mislead the committee by concluding, incorrectly,
that they are in fact part time employees. He also exhibits a fundamentally
flawed understanding of “air time”. You can only buy this
time if you have 25 years of service and are intending to retire immediately
upon receiving the time. Not to mention that it is also cost prohibitive
for most state employees.
Senate Retirement Committee Webpage:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/senate/retirement.php
This page also has contact information (Name, address, phone
number, e-mail, etc.) for each committee member for our members use in
contacting members on retirement legislation.
House Retirement Committee Legislation Website:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/com/gasret.htm
Meeting Notes from 2007 Senate Retirement Committee Meetings
can be found at: http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/senate/publications/07minutes/Retirement.pdf
Unfortunately the Senate Retirement Committee is not quite
as interactive as the House Committee.
If you have any questions or specific concerns that you
would like to have me research, please feel free to contact me at gri5thJ@yahoo.com.