Our presentation before the Pension Commission on Tuesday, April 8, was excellent! Our place on the agenda was moved from 7th to 1st in order to accommodate the large group of us who were there. We guessed there were about thirty. Sen. Cal Larson introduced our bill and both he and Rep. Michael Beard stressed the unfairness of the issue. Larry Jacobson, Tom Selwold, Rick Winters, and Bob Geyen presented our case and did an outstanding job. Their theme was that we had one, irrevocable choice which then got revoked, while those who made no choice were given two choices. Joe O'Neill answered several questions and also displayed the original election ballot. Our bill has been amended as a result of meeting with TRA officials during the first week of April and getting new estimated cost information. The amendment states that we would get a percentage of the positive difference between IMP and our High Five. The estimate was for teachers who retired or will retire after January 15, 1998. The cost of full, 100% equity is $500,300,000. Since we had told legislators that the cost of our bill would be between $200 million and $250 million, we decided that 45% equity would be reasonable. The cost of 45% equity is $225,135,000. At the conclusion of presentations and questions, Chairman Steve Smith announced that our bill would be laid over. Joe O'Neill explained that this is not unusual, and what will likely happen now is our bill will come up again, possibly late in April, for consideration as to whether it should be part of the Omnibus Pension Bill.
In the meantime, please continue your positive relationships with legislators, especially if you live in a Pension Commission member's district. Stress that we have a newly amended bill based on estimates from TRA. If your legislators are not commission members, but support our cause, ask them to talk to commission members they know. Ask them to convey to the commission member that it is time to bring closure to this issue with a reasonable solution, and SF 213 and HF 282, as amended, will achieve this.
The date for the next meeting of the Pre-1969 Coordinating Committee has not been set. |
