Governor receives request to veto retirement bill

The Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System Board of Trustees Wednesday asked Gov. Kathleen Blanco to veto a bill that would give a group of 450 probation and parole officers’ retirement benefits they didn’t pay to receive according to this article from Thursday’s Legislative Briefs section of The Advocate.

Lawmakers approved the bill over the objections of the board of the Louisiana State Employees' Retirement System, which sent the letter to Blanco asking her to reject the legislation.

To pay for the benefits, people on probation and parole would have to pay a new $65 fee after July 1, under House Bill 845 by Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand, D-St. Martinsville.

The measure would apply to Department of Public Safety and Corrections officers who chose not to upgrade to a more lucrative retirement plan in 2002. Durand's bill would allow them to get into the plan retroactively, with the cost of the increased benefits financed by the fee. Durand said that would create fairness by treating all corrections officers equally.

LASERS officials said the bill was unfair to officers who paid their own money to upgrade to the newer plan, so lawmakers decided to let those employees get reimbursed for the payments.

But Louis Quinn, with the LASERS board, said that only worsened the bill and threatened to add million of dollars in debt to the retirement system because the probation and parole fee wouldn't cover all the costs of the increased benefits.

LASERS Board opposes House Bill 845

With the passage of House Bill 845, the Louisiana senate voted to place an enormous and completely unjustifiable financial burden on the LASERS trust fund, says Louis Quinn, Legislative Committee Chair of the LASERS Board of Trustees.

HB 845, by Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand, won approval Monday night on the floor of the senate. When debate on HB 845 began, the measure would have granted special retirement benefits to a select group of LASERS members at no cost to the recipients. It made 450 Adult Probation & Parole officers eligible for free service upgrades which would allow them to retire with larger pensions at an earlier age. Hundreds of their correctional officer colleagues had previously paid tens of thousands of dollars each for similar benefits under the two-tiered retirement plan available to many corrections personnel.

“HB 845 was a bad bill when it went to the full senate,” Quinn says. “But the version that won final passage is a train wreck. The select few can continue to enrich themselves, and the retirement system is left to pick up the tab.”

Under an amendment offered by State Sen. Walter Boasso, HB 845 now provides that:

“Any member who is a probation and parole officer in the office of adult services of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, who is employed before January 1, 2002, who elected to transfer from the primary component to the secondary component and who upgraded his service credit as permitted pursuant to Subparagraph (B)(2)(b) of this Section, may elect to be reimbursed and to have his benefit calculated as provided in R.S. 11:444(A)(2)(c) for all creditable service in the system earned before the date the member transferred to the secondary component."

According to LASERS actuary Charles Hall, this means that LASERS, in addition to bearing the cost of providing unpaid-for retirement benefits to a select group of probation & parole officers, will also have to reimburse this special, select group of Adult Probation & Parole officers who paid to upgrade prior service in a similar fashion.

“The bottom line,” Quinn says, “is that a privileged group will receive free, unearned service credit from LASERS, and the cost will be subsidized by every other hard-working member of LASERS.”