Council 2-backed pension reform finally approved
Years of work by Council 2 on pension reform finally paid off this session.
Gov. Gary Locke signed the bill into law on May 14.
The measure establishes a new pensions board on which the views of active and retired employees will be heard more strongly than was the case with the previous board.
Members can therefore be assured that future pension policy will take their opinions into account, which was not always the case with the previous board.To achieve this employee representation, the Select Committee on Pension Policy replaces the Joint Committee on Pension Policy (JCPP).
The new 20-member board will include four members representing active employees and two members representing retired employees.
Also serving on the committee will be four employer representatives, four members of the state Senate, four members of the state House of Representatives and the directors of the Department of Retirement Systems and the Office of Financial Management.
Council 2 took the lead in working to achieve this breakthrough in pension governance, the name given to the process whereby pensions are managed.
Pat Thompson, Council 2's Director of Legislation/Political Action, led a coalition of labor unions supporting the bill and testified before the committee. The measure received widespread support, but passage of the bill was never a forgone conclusion.
Indeed, Thompson says the end game was as nerve racking as the beginning and middle games. So much so that he was not sure that the measure would pass this year until the final day of the regular session.
When the state senate passed the bill 45 to 3 shortly before the end of the session, Thompson thought the path was clear to final approval by the state legislature. But, because the bill had been amended in the Senate, it had to go back to the House for their concurrence.
"The amendment was a simple one," Thompson says. "We weren't concerned that the House would have any problems with it.
"But we were wrong."
Rep. Helen Sommers (D-Seattle), Chair of the Appropriations Committee, requested two changes to the Senate version. She wanted to change the word "shall" to "may" when creating the sub-committees established by the Senate. She also wanted to set up an Executive Committee of the new Select Committee.
"Neither idea was a problem for us, but the clock was running and any delay could kill the bill," Thompson explains. When it looked as though passage of the measure might be delayed for another year, Rep. Bill Fromhold (D-Vancouver) and Sen. Don Carlson (R-Vancouver) stepped in and worked out a deal with their leaderships to keep the pension governance measure alive and moving.
On Saturday the House agreed 79-19 to concur with the Senate and the bill was delivered to the Governor's office on Sunday May 4 with only one day to spare.
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