State House Dome: Civil union bill heads toward full House

The Union Leader
By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief

Efforts to cut compensation for highest-paid retirees dropped off the cliff in committee last week when the Executive Departments and Administration Committee voted for a compromise reform plan.

The committee killed attempts to base pensions on a retiree's last five years of work instead of the current three years. It also refused to prevent sick pay and accrued leave from being figured into a worker's last year of salary. The idea of boost workers' payments into the system by 40 percent failed.

A 16-0 committee vote kept alive a proposal to bar anyone from making more in retirement than while working. Also surviving was a move to stop the flow of money into the special accounts that fund pension raises and health insurance subsidies.

Ironically, it was concern about the ailing special accounts two years ago that prompted the study of the retirement system.

The biggest change that passed was to get rid of the fun-house mirror accounting method the Legislature put in effect in 1991. The age-aggregate method inflated the image of the plan's long-term health by $1 billion.

Many key long-time state workers are watching the reform measure carefully.

Administrative Services' Hill said several long-time high-ranking employees at Health and Human Services, Transportation and his own department are moving toward the exit door.

They fear losing much of what they are now entitled to if they don't leave before the reforms take effect.

A lot of expertise will go into retirement if they leave.

"This has already done some damage," he said.

With retirement ground rules in flux, "People don't want to risk having this come up at midnight in some conference committee in June," he said.

The Nashua Telegraph

A Telegraph Column By Kevin Landrigan 
  Published: Sunday, March 25, 2007

Unions 1, taxpayers 0

Score round one for organized labor in the fight over putting the state pension system on a diet.

Firefighters, police officers and state employees flexed their muscle and got a House committee to back away from the most significant changes that a working group of labor and management representatives had hammered out under the watchful eye of a federal mediator.

The fracas already cost one lobbyist a longtime gig. Former State Employees Association Executive Director Denis Parker severed his ties as a lobbyist for the union this week.

Parker was one of those working group members and had to painfully watch as his employer opposed the plan.

Before the week was over, Parker had tied on with the National Education Association of New Hampshire, whose lobbyist, Rick Trombly, endorsed the working group product.

The NEA had not taken a vote nor had the other union for public educators, the American Federation of Teachers.

“Denis is one of the recognized experts in the state on retirement. We’re lucky to have him,’’ Trombly said.

The state municipal lobby’s executive committee met Friday to plot its next move.

“Many of our members aren’t going to be pleased,’’ said Maura Carroll, the group’s chief lobbyist.