Pension bills likely dead for legislative session

March 21-- Mar. 21--With only one day remaining in the 2019 General Assembly, legislators seem unlikely to make any major changes to the state's public employee and teacher pension systems.

Numerous bills were filed by lawmakers, but most failed to even be called for a hearing by a legislative committee, and only a few made it through the entire legislative process. The bills that were sent to Gov. Matt Bevin's desk dealt more with side issues, such as requiring investors working with Kentucky Retirement Systems to follow the code of ethics, or with elections to the KRS board.

One of the bills not called was House Bill 504, which was sponsored by Rep. Scott Lewis, who represents Ohio County and part of Daviess County.

"They have not taken up any pension bills, to my knowledge," Lewis, a Republican and former Ohio County Schools superintendent said Wednesday. "I was hoping to have a discussion of that bill in committee to let people know what's in it.

"We had a lot of stakeholders at the table when we drafted it," Lewis said.

Kentucky has one of the worst-funded pension public pension systems in the nation. In November, the Teachers Retirement System has slightly more than half of the funds it needs to meet its retirement obligations, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

House Bill 504 would only apply to teachers hired in 2020 or beyond. The bill would create two retirement plans for new teachers -- a "foundational" plan where both the teacher and the state contribute 8 percent of the teacher's salary into the plan, and a "supplemental" benefit, where the teacher and the state would both contribute 2 percent.

Under the bill, new teachers would have to work until age 55 to receive full benefits. Currently, a teacher has to put in 27 years of service to receive full benefits. The benefit plans in the bill would be 100 percent funded in the beginning, and the bill contains a mechanism to fund the plans if the funding level fell below 90 percent, including allowing the Teachers Retirement System board to change the retirement age, the plan's interest rate and benefit factor.

Lewis said previously that the idea was to craft a bill that would not affect teachers already in the pension system.

An actuarial analysis from the firm of Cavanaugh Macdonald Consulting released earlier this month projected that HB 504 would save $560 million over 20 years.

The bill was assigned to the House State Government Committee but was never called.

"Of course, leadership decides which bills get called, and they decided it wasn't going to be called for discussion on the floor," Lewis said.

When asked if his bill or another pension bill could move through the process when lawmakers convene for the final day of business on March 28, Lewis said, "You never say never, but at this point, I don't think a pension bill will be moving."

He said it's his hope a pension plan won't be introduced on the last day and lawmakers won't have time to read it.

Lewis, who is a member of a pension working group that studied possible changes to the pension system, said that group could meet after the session is over to discuss pension plans.

"We just want to make sure we have something substantial, with a benefit package that helps us attract new teachers."

School districts are already struggling with finding new teachers, he said.

"In five years, we are going to see a major shortage."

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse

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