You will note we have just posted the agendas for the Select Committee and the LEOFF 2 Board. At this point there is not much of interest, nor is there anything that seems to threaten our pension stability. Of course it is early with the next session of the Legislature not due to start until January. It always seems the attacks come during the session and with little or no notice. That is why we watch these committee meetings just to see what is on peoples’ minds.
One item of interest is the LEOFF 2 Benefit Improvement Account. They were able to set that up without any objections even from the employers. They took $300 million out of the L2 Pension trust and put it in a sub account for benefit improvements–and without any plans for what those benefits might be.
So we will watch to see what ideas surface and whether the retired L2 members are included in any benefit improvement–after all it is their money too.
Finally, from the L1 perceptive it would appear that we could take a part of our surplus and create our own benefit improvement account. The surplus is currently at $1.4 billion. Seems to me that if they could take $300 million out of L2 we could could easily take $500 million out of L1 and distribute it to the beneficiaries.
Guess what, this takes us right back to where we were in 2000. Déjà Vu all over again.
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