By KENNETH HART - The Independent
ASHLAND — Gov. Steve Beshear said Tuesday that he was hopeful that last week’s passage of a public employee pension reform bill marked the beginning of a “new era of cooperation” in Frankfort and an end to the “rank partisanship” that he said has stood in the way of progress for too long.
“We’re now going to apply that same spirit to the education of our kids, getting better health care and creating new jobs right here in Ashland and Boyd County,” Beshear told an audience during a brief stop at the Ashland Central Fire Station. “When we work together, we can accomplish great things.”
According to Beshear, the bill, which he signed into law Friday, will slow down the rate of growth in the state’s unfunded pension liability, which currently stands at about $27 billion, while also allowing state government to begin taking significant steps to close that gap.
Additionally, the governor said city and county governments and school districts will realize immediate savings of about $56 million, which he said should work out to about $120,000 each.
Best of all, the governor said, the reform bill will accomplish all of that while at the same time placing the retirement funds of the state’s teachers, firefighters, police officers and other government workers on sound financial footing and protects those benefits over the long term.
“We must continue to honor the commitments we’ve made to our public employees,” Beshear said. “These people have worked hard and they’ve earned the right to a financially secure retirement.”
The General Assembly passed the pension reform bill following a whirlwind five-day special session. Beshear said the speedy passage and the fact that the measure received only one nay vote were evidence that Democrats and Republicans could set aside their differences and work together on issues important to Kentuckians.
Pension reform had been a top priority in the senate during the past two legislative sessions, but two separate reform bills passed by that chamber died in the House. Beshear called on the two bodies to compromise, and, once they did, he called them into special session to pass the bill.
State Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook, said that overhauling the pension system wasn’t different than other reform efforts in which he had been involved during his years in the legislature.
“It just took time to get it to where we could all reach agreement,” he said.
Major components of the bill include a requirement that new employees pay an additional 1 percent of salary toward their health insurance costs; limiting annual cost-of-living pension adjustments to 1.5 percent without legislative approval, rather than tying them to the Consumer Price Index; and eliminating the practice of ‘double dipping,” where an employee could retire from a state job with full pension benefits, then go back to work for the state and start a second pension fund.
Additionally, under the bill, new hires will have to work longer before becoming eligible for full retirement benefits. Previously, public employees in non-hazardous duty positions could retire after 27 years of service. The bill replaces that with what’s known as “the rule of 87,” where a worker’s age and years of service must add up to 87 before they can receive full retirement.
The bill also establishes a minimum retirement age of 57 for new employees.
Those changes are designed to reduce the number of people retiring, and thus decrease the burden on the pension system, Adkins said.
The measure also includes a schedule of incremental increases that the legislature must appropriate to the system over a 10-year period.
