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Retiree Benefits Defended
Legislators Say Staff Needs Lure To Stay On
By Will Sentell, The Advocate News
June 29, 2004
Legislative workers deserve a hefty boost in retirement benefits to entice them to stay when term limits forces out dozens of lawmakers, sponsors of the bill said Monday.
Keeping those veteran employees on the state payroll will help offset the loss of institutional knowledge when legislators have to retire, said Rep. Charles DeWitt, D-Lecompte, and chief sponsor of the controversial measure.
"I look at it as an incentive to make employees stay there," DeWitt said.
The bill, which won approval on the final day of the legislative session, is under fire from current and former state retirement officials.
They say it is unfair to single out 500 legislative employees for a retirement increase in a state work force of 65,000, especially in a session marked by money problems.
Critics also say the bill offers select employees all but unprecedented retirement perks, gives them a no-strings-attached bonus at taxpayer expense and is so unfair it may trigger a lawsuit.
The measure is House Bill 1271. Those urging Gov. Kathleen Blanco to veto it include Louis Quinn, chairman of the Louisiana State Employees' Retirement System board of trustees; Connie Carlton, executive director of the Retired State Employees Association and Glenda Chambers, former executive director of the state retirement system.
Blanco and her legal team are reviewing the bill, aides said last week.
State lawmakers are limited to three consecutive terms in the same chamber -- 12 years. Voters approved those limits in 1995 with 76 percent support. The new rules start affecting lawmakers in 2007.
Sen. Lambert Boissiere, D-New Orleans, handled DeWitt's bill in the Senate and also said that the increases for legislative employees are justified by term limits.
"It is just an added incentive to keep people working for us in the level they are in," Boissiere said Monday.
Rep. Mike Futrell, R-Baton Rouge, voted against the bill, said it was "snuck in" at the last minute and dismissed comments that term limits justify the increase.
"I would say that makes no sense at all," Futrell said. "If you look at the pay package and the benefits that legislators' workers currently have, it is very good. You have a lot of legislative aides that stay on even when the legislator leaves."
DeWitt said he was surprised by last week's outcry over the bill because it did not trigger opposition when it went through the legislative process.
"It looks like everybody got excited or something," DeWitt said of the criticism.
One of the key provisions in the bill was added in a House-Senate negotiating committee on the last day of the session. Some lawmakers said they did not understand the measure, and the last-minute change, when it sailed through the House and Senate that day -- June 21.
The bill increases retirement benefits for legislative employees and, under the late change, makes those hikes retroactive. It allows legislative employees to use up to three years of accumulated time for sickness and annual leave to meet retirement eligibility. Officials say such a provision is virtually unheard of in public retirement systems.
"That could very well be," DeWitt said of the rarity of the three-year rule. "I just look at it as an incentive."
DeWitt contends the higher benefits are justified because the experience of legislative workers will be especially valuable to taxpayers when dozens of legislators start leaving office in the next few years.
"Institutional knowledge will leave with us," he said. "I was trying to do something."
Retirement benefits are figured by using years of service, average compensation and an accrual rate set by the state. The bill raises that rate solely for legislative workers to 3 percent from 2.5 percent.
Boissiere disputed comments made last week by Quinn, who said the legislation might add $30 million to Louisiana's unfunded liability -- the gap between what a pension system has and what it owes.
Boissiere said he thinks the price tag will be between $2.5 million and $6 million over 25 years.
Quinn now says the bill would cost the state $60 million over 30 years and that legislative employees would win a retroactive pension increase even though they did not make corresponding contributions.
State retirement officials have also urged Blanco to veto Senate Bill 243 by Boissiere, which is essentially the same as the DeWitt bill except that the retirement benefits increase would not be retroactive.
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