Jon Lender: Bill would let retired municipal police collect pensions while double-dipping as school security personnel
Proponents of House Bill 5538, An Act Concerning the Continuation of Retirement Allowances for Certain Retirees upon Subsequent Employment by a
But critics have been arguing that the price for safer schools shouldn't include pension double-dipping that's banned for good reasons.
And now the chairman of the
"[T]he Commission's tax counsel has concluded that HB 5538 cannot be implemented because it violates federal tax laws," Adomeit wrote
And so the bill stands at a troublesome legal and legislative crossroads that the MERS program has seen before -- involving the always controversial subject of double-dipping.
The biggest example of this was the yearslong fight by
They said state law bans the payment of a MERS pension to people like Maturo who retire from one job in a town and later take another full-time job in a municipality that participates in the MERS program. The "re-employed" retiree can only continue collecting his or her pension if he or she works fewer than 20 hours a week in a MERS town or city.
The state legislature approved bills in 2013 and 2015 that would have let people collect municipal pensions while re-employed in new city or town jobs that are not specifically included in MERS. That legislation could have helped not only Maturo, a Republican, but also at least one active Democrat working in
Another fight?
Now comes another potential fight in the form of HB 5538, which proponents say arises from the unfortunate new realities of keeping students safe in public schools.
"This legislation is a practical approach to protecting children in schools," the
"As part of the broader dialogue on school safety, one of the most effective measures we can take is to simply enable municipalities to employ experienced personnel to better protect our children," went the written testimony of the bill's co-sponsors, House Republican Leader
But others say creating this exemption would open the door to mass double-dipping.
"This proposal compounds cost for local governments who, under this bill, would be paying a pension and a salary to the same employee simultaneously," the
Adomeit, chairman of the commission that oversees the retirement division of the state comptroller's office, said in his letter to legislators: "HB 5538 orders us to do what federal law orders us not to do. HB 5538 requires us to continue pension payments to [MERS] police officers who take early retirement and go to work in a
Klarides, the
Conway said in his research, he ran into the MERS prohibition against full-time work for active pensioners, and, to him, the problem was that it eliminated one of three applicant pools for the school security jobs. Retired state police and military police could take these jobs without limiting their hours and still collect their pensions, but not the municipal police retirees located right in town, he said. "So I reached out to Themis."
Conway said hiring a retired police officer saves money for his school system. If you hire "the guy that's already getting a pension, [then] you're not paying a pension, and it's not the hourly rate that they would otherwise have been making if you pulled from your own [local] police force," he said.
HB 5538 would apply directly to a situation that has already popped up in the nearby town of
The state retirement commission recently imposed a brief suspension of Trabka's
Trabka lives in
Trabka and
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