Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement

Update

Prepared by

Dave Ganfield

4/9/2008

Print copy of this report available at:
http://msvfa.org/legislation.html 

The Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement (LCPR) met on 4/8/08 to discuss a number of bills relating to Volunteer Firefighter Relief Associations (VFRA).

I will review them by bill number.

HF 3938, SF XXXX – State Auditor's Working Group Recommendations. Testifying were State Auditor Otto, Pension Director Hennesy-Allen, Dave Kinney, Counsel and Dave Ganfield of the Working Group.

 H.F. 3938 (Murphy, M., by request); S.F. xxxx: Volunteer firefighters; State Auditor's volunteer fire working group recommendations. Passed as amended: H3938-1A; H3938-2A; H3938-4A; H3938-7A

Staff Materials - MUST READ

http://www.commissions.leg.state.mn.us/lcpr/documents/mtgmaterials/2008/h3938-sxxxx.pdf 

A number of amendments were added for consideration by LCPR Executive Director Larry Martin.

• H3938-1A and H3938-2A were adopted as technical amendments for clarification and grammatical errors.
• H3938-7A was adopted establishing surviving spouse at time of death of the member. The working group recommended that each relief have the option of at time of death or at time of separation. Commission members were not comfortable with allowing an option.
• H3938-10A was adopted repealing nonconforming local ancillary benefits for Anoka, Butterfield, Coon Rapids, Edina, Fairmont, Falcon Heights, Golden Valley, Wayzata and White Bear Lake. We were successful in changing the effective date to June 30, 2009 so each of these reliefs's would have sufficient time to be notified and correct if necessary.

 

We were successful in opposing adoption of the following amendments;

• H3938-3A, H3938-4A & H3938-5A  These pertained to addition brokers insurance for broker dealers holding relief assets. The Working Group will review this during the next session.
• H3938-6A Companion amendment to 7A which would have established surviving spouse at time of separation.
• H3938-8A  This amendment would have retained the single method of calculating the deferred interest. The language adopted in the bill will allow each relief the ability to establish their own method as long as approved by the municipality.
• H3938-9A Adds liability calculation for short service under 5 years. The Working Group will review this during the next session.

 

The final bill was adopted as amended for inclusion into the omnibus pension bill.

HF 3895, SF 3630 Statewide Lump Sum Volunteer Firefighters Retirement Plan. This bill was to be heard after  HF 3938 but was deferred till the evening agenda due to significant changes. I returned for the evening session after the 5 hour AM session. Testifying was Nyle Zikmund.

The bill was deleted in its entirety after the Commission deleted Article 1 and 2.

• Amendment A08-1599 was adopted establishing a Voluntary Statewide Volunteer Firefighter Retirement Plan Advisory Board. The Advisory Board would be appointed by the Governor and administered by the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA). Funding would either be from the general fund of the legislature or from those that would join. Basically this bill establishes a Board to make the final recommendations for this type of plan and to come back next session with the final information.

 

The plan would be strictly voluntary and not use state aid funds that would reduce aid to those that do not join. It would be run by PERA and after speaking with PERA Exec. Director Mary Vanek, I learned that this would always be voluntary and that PERA would never want to be in the middle of making this mandatory. Voluntary consolidation of career FF relief's has worked very well and  those reliefs have never been forced into mandatory.

 

The final bill was adopted as amended for inclusion into the omnibus pension bill.

 

HF 3715, SF 3325 Increasing Lump Sum and Monthly flexible service pension maximum amounts. Testifying was Nyle Zikmund and Brian Rice.

 

This bill would increase the maximum benefit for Monthly plans from $56/mo/yr of service to $100/mo/yr of service and the Lump Sump plans from $7500/yr of service to $10,000/yr of service.

• Amendment H3715-1A was adopted phasing the increases over 3-5 years.

 

The final bill was adopted as amended for inclusion into the omnibus pension bill.

 

HF 3744, SF 3532 Reallocation of additional amortization aid.

There was concern by the OSA that this would decrease the additional aid to small relief's allowing a minimum pension benefit. We were assured by the lobbyist that this would not and that it would be clarified to assure that it would not.