Texas Public Employee Association - Legislative Update
State Employee Update - April 25, 2013
SB 1459/HB1882 - ERS Pension Eligibility
TPEA continues to work to address the actuarial deficit at ERS while also minimizing the impact on current, especially tenured, state employees.
On Monday, the Senate State Affairs and House Pensions committees reported out, respectively, SB 1459 and HB 1882 as committee substitutes. As detailed in the previous TPEA newsletter, the bills make major changes to retirement policies affecting state employees.
Most worrisome to state employees and TPEA are provisions changing eligibility for retirement for those employees who have not met the following criteria by August 31, 2014:
- turned 50 years old,
- met the rule of 70 (number of years of service plus age equals 70), or
- completed 20 years of service.
Those employees not meeting one of these criteria would not be eligible to retire until the age of 62. Any person wishing to retire before the age of 62 would see a reduction in pension payments by 5% for every year of early retirement (5% reduction at age 61, 10% reduction at age 60, etc.).
For a detailed description of all of the proposed changes, see our last newsletter.
Since the original bill was introduced, TPEA has received considerable feedback from its members. One of the more common sentiments is that the state would be unfairly changing the terms of employment mid-career. TPEA believes that any changes to retirement eligibility should apply to new employees hired starting September 1, 2013.
More at http://www.tpea.org/news/letterarchives/2013/apr2013_2.html .