Resource Center
Bills at a Glance

è Bills That Are Still Alive

 

è Bills That Have Died

July 2, 2008

PARS will be tracking these and all retirement related bills for the remainder of the 2007-08 session and will be updating their status in our monthly “Legislative Alert” e-mail publication.  You can subscribe to the Legislative Alert by sending an email to subscribe@phase2systems.info or by calling this toll-free number 800-540-6369 x135.

Bills That Are Still Alive

AB 591 (Dymally) Community Colleges: Part-Time Temporary Faculty

This bill would have required that temporary faculty receive pay and benefits equal to that of tenured and tenure track faculty with comparable qualifications doing comparable work and required that non-tenure track faculty members teaching at least 40% of a full load be eligible for the same healthcare benefits as tenured and tenure track faculty. However, the bill was amended Jan 14 to remove the necessity to pay non-tenure track faculty equal pay and benefits. A January 28th amendment also provides that any such faculty working less than 67% of full time assignment hours be classified as temporary.

AB 789 (Mullin) STRS Purchase Power Payments

This bill requires that 2.5% of creditable compensation be credited to the Supplemental Benefit Maintenance Account (SBMA) each year for 4 years commencing July 1, 2008 to fund “purchase power protection” payments to STRS retirees as an inflation protection.

This bill was introduced to protect the state contribution to the SBMA. The Governor’s budget proposal attempts to make an “unconditional guarantee” of the 80%-of-purchasing-power benefit in exchange for lowering the current state contribution to SBMA from 2.5% to 2.2% as a budgetary savings device. Fearing a situation similar to the state’s withholding of the contribution in 2003-2004, this bill counters the Governor’s proposal and guarantee that the account will be funded at its current rate.

AB 1480 (Mendoza) STRS Roth IRA

This bill would permit STRS to administer a Roth IRA to accept a rollover from an annuity contract or custodial account offered by the system.

AB 1844 (Hernandez) Commission Bill on Fraud and OPEB Reporting

This Governor’s Commission bill establishes penalties for fraud related to STRS, PERS, and County retirement system benefits and requires public agencies to report information on post-retirement healthcare to the State Controller every year.

AB 1936 (Emmerson) PERS: Nonprofit Mutual Water Companies

This bill would permit non-profit mutual water companies that meet certain requirements to participate in PERS.

AB 1963 (Carter) Same Service Credit for 2 Retirement Systems

This bill would broaden the exception to the prohibition on receiving credit for the same service in two retirement systems to permit concurrent participation and credit for service in a defined benefit plan supported by public funds provided by systems other than PERS and a supplemental defined benefit plan offered by the employer.

AB 2202 (Caballero) PERS Part-time, Seasonal, Temporary Employee Information

AB 2202 would mandate that every state agency, school employer, or contracting agency of PERS provide information and data regarding its employees who are not members of PERS. Currently, PERS can only require data on PERS members. There are no details in the bill about what data PERS will require or the regulatory procedures it would put in place, so costs and administrative burdens to local government are difficult to gauge.

AB 2390 (Karnette) STRS Post-retirement Earnings

This bill extends the post-retirement earnings limit exemption of STRS members for one year until June 30, 2009. As stated in the CalSTRS News section above, there are several issues being considered by the CalSTRS Post-Retirement Earnings Limitations Working Group as possible amendments to this bill. However, the issues being considered are unlikely to make it into the bill this year. The bill did, however, have a recent amendment adding STRS members who retired between June 1, 2007 and December 31, 2007 to be allowed to purchase service credit for time spent teaching outside the U.S. Active STRS members were granted that option by legislation enacted last year – AB 1432 (Soto), Chapter 513, Statutes of 2007.

AB 2673 (Feuer) ’37 Act County Retirement System Death Benefits

AB 2673 will conform the '37 Act statutes to be consistent with the California Domestic Partnership Act by modifying the survivorship payment to the domestic partner, which specifies domestic partners have the same rights and responsibilities in survivorship as a widow or widower. It will also provide prospective implementation of the law.

AB 2940 (de Leon) PERS IRAs for Private Sector

This bill would create the California Employee Savings Program, allowing PERS to offer individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to employees of private sector companies.

AB 3041 (Comm. on Public Employees, Ret. and Soc. Sec.) PERS Housekeeping Bill

This bill would provide that a PERS employee serving less than full-time for 6 months be must join PERS at the time the person completes 125 days or 1,000 hours of work, instead of current language which vaguely states the person must join some time “after” exceeding the threshold . A recent amendment also revises the threshold to include in PERS any employee working 20 hours or more a week for a period of over 1 year. PERS believes that these changes will close up “loopholes” and clarify exactly when an employee is mandated into PERS.

SB 579 (Wiggins) PERS Public Safety Member Certification

SB 579 requires PERS to certify to the Internal Revenue Service and health insurance plan providers that a member is a retired public safety officer when the member retires. This will enable those retired safety members to elect to direct up to $3,000 of their pension before taxes to pay health or long-term care insurance premiums in accordance with the federal Pension Protection Act of 2006. This bill was enacted into law on June 2nd as Chapter 21, Statutes of 2008.

SB 1123 (Wiggins) Retiree Health Benefits and California Actuarial Advisory Panel

This Governor’s Commission bill requires local entities to prepare an actuarial study and make it public at least two weeks before changes to postemployment benefits (and not on consent calendar). It also creates the California Actuarial Advisory plan to provide expert and independent information to encourage greater transparency and understanding of actuarial methodologies and assumptions

SB 1376 (Wiggins) STRS Housekeeping Bill

This is the yearly STRS housekeeping bill through which STRS makes various minor and technical amendments to the Teachers' Retirement Law. The bill contains language requiring an employer that hires a retired STRS member to work under an exemption to the post-retirement earnings limit to submit required documentation to STRS by the end of the school year.

Bills That Have Died

AB 36 (Niello) Retirement Benefits Fraud

This bill makes it a crime to make or present false material statements and representations in connection with retirement systems' benefits and applications, or to aid or abet someone in this regard. The bill would also make it a crime to knowingly accept payments one knows they are not entitled to, with the intent to keep for personal benefit.

AB 1967 (Torrico) PERS & STRS Investing

The bill would prohibit PERS and STRS from investing in a private equity company if any country affiliated with the sovereign wealth fund is not party to certain international human rights treaties. STRS and others opposed the bill due to its interference with PERS/STRS investment authority.

AB 2024 (Houston) PERS Disability Retirement

This disability retirement reform bill would have discontinued the retirement allowance of a PERS disability retiree if the retiree refuses to submit to a medical examination. The provision would apply to a retiree over the minimum retirement age who has been receiving a disability retirement allowance for less than 36 months.

AB 2350 (Garrick) Prefunding Employee Benefits

This bill, sponsored by the Governor’s office, mandated that all public agencies in PEHMCA (Public Employees’ Medical and Hospital Care Act), the PERS health care program, pre-fund their retiree healthcare liabilities through the PERS OPEB Trust program. Opponents of the bill foresaw negative consequences including that many public agencies may drop out of PEHMCA as a result and the bill died a quick death.

SB 1095 (Vincent) Mandated Health Benefits for Teachers

SB 1095 mandated that school districts provide health benefits for retired teachers and that those teachers contribute toward the benefits. This bill was defeated in committee because of its mandated costs on the state and teachers, estimated to be in the billions.

SB 1488 (Calderon) STRS Golden Handshake

This bill provided that a retiree receiving a STRS Golden Handshake would not forfeit his or her additional credit if he or she is, after January 1, 2004, reemployed within 5 years after retirement as a substitute teacher by a school district from which he or she retired. Such bills have repeatedly died in the past due to opposition from the Department of Finance.

SB 1514 (Margett) Public Employee Postretirement Benefits

This bill required the future annual costs of OPEB benefits to be made public at a public meeting at least 2 weeks prior to adoption. This bill died but the language was incorporated into another bill.

Updated: July 8, 2008