Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Pension reform moving forward

The House today passed pension reform 98-0. It now moves on to the Senate where it is expected to pass easily on Friday.

I would like to expand on comments I made in my last post about double dipping. We received a briefing on the pension reform legislation on Monday. In the meeting I asked about allowing double dipping if you become a legislator. Apparently everyone is being treated the same, and here is the explanation:

Under this bill you cannot double dip in the same retirement system. Now there are several different systems, KERS (mostly state employees) CERS (county, city, and classified school employees) KTRS (Kentucky Teacher Retirement System) SPRS ( State Police) and the Judicial retirement system (Judges and Legislators). So future employees cannot double dip in the same retirement system. However, future employees can get multiple retirements from different systems. Here is an example. Joe Smith is a police officer in CERS. Joe retires with a full CERS pension. Joe can go back to work for an agency that is attached to CERS, but cannot collect another pension. However, say Joe then went on to become a teacher. Then Joe can begin working on a second pension with KTRS.

My primary concern was that everyone is being treated the same, and it looks like they are. Just wanted to clarify that issue now that I am more educated on it.