Regular Session News #6: Packed agenda for upcoming House retirement committee meeting
Apr 9, 2024
The House retirement committee is scheduled to meet at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 11, to consider several bills that would impact TRSL. The lengthy agenda includes the following bills:Return to Work
House Bill 17 (Rep. Owen) would temporarily allow most TRSL retirees to be reemployed through a contract or corporate contract without the typical one-year waiting period or suspension of retirement benefit.
House Bill 35 (Rep. Riser) would allow retirees who retired after June 30, 2020, to return to work in critical shortage positions, without a one-year waiting period or suspension of retirement benefit, if there are no other properly certified non-retiree candidates to fill the vacancy. As currently written, the proposed change would not apply to disability retirees or retirees employed by higher education institutions.
Optional Retirement Plan (ORP)
House Bill 31 (Rep. Freiberg) would allow active, contributing participants in the Optional Retirement Plan (ORP) as of June 30, 2024, to make a one-time choice to prospectively join the TRSL defined benefit plan with a written request to TRSL on or before December 30, 2024. ORP members who choose to become TRSL Regular Plan members would cease making contributions to their ORP accounts on January 31, 2025, and begin making contributions and accruing service credit in the TRSL defined benefit plan on February 1, 2025, as a member first eligible for membership in a state retirement plan on that date. The bill does not authorize the purchase of service credit for time in which the individual participated in the ORP. Distributions from ORP accounts would continue to be subject to current law.TRSL Investments/Proxy Voting
House Bill 902 (Rep. Melerine) proposes to require a commitment from any proxy advisory firm retained by a Louisiana public retirement system to base their voting recommendations for shareholder-sponsored proposals solely on the economic interests of the retirement system. The legislation also provides the following regarding proxy voting for these types of proposals:
- Requires the proxy advisory firm's voting recommendations to mirror the recommendations of a company’s board of directors of which the majority are independent for each vote, or the firm must perform and document an economic analysis that demonstrates when its recommendation is inconsistent with the recommendation of the majority-independent board of directors.
- Allows certain members of the public, who believe a proxy vote was inconsistent with the provisions of law, to request the economic analysis performed by the proxy advisory firm from retirement systems. Requires retirement systems to respond to these requests within a set time period.
- Authorizes enforcement of this law by the state attorney general who may investigate and take action if there is reasonable belief a violation of law has or will occur. Enforcement may include requiring sworn statements, depositions, review of documents, or action to impound affected accounts.
Senate Bill 1 (Sen. Price) would add clarifying language in the law related to employer contributions eligible for transfer to another Louisiana public retirement system when a member requests to transfer their service credit to another system, fund, or plan in which they become eligible for membership.
Social Security Offsets
House Concurrent Resolution 20 (Rep. M. Johnson) memorializes Congress to review the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) Social Security benefit reductions and to eliminate or reduce them by supporting H.R. 82 and S. 597 of the 118th Congress and all similar purposed legislation.
TRSL will keep you informed about the status of bills being monitored throughout the session. You can view all meeting schedules and agendas on the Louisiana State Legislature website. Visit the Legislation page of this website, to see all legislation impacting the retirement system.
Stay tuned for future updates.