Legislation to create a defined benefits pension plan for most publicly employed first responders in Alaska advanced from the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee on Thursday, over the bitter objections of far-right legislators.
House Bill 22, by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson, would create a long sought-after defined benefit pension plan for firefighters, most police officers and correctional officers. Josephson has called the plan a conservative approach that would go a long way to addressing recruitment and retention problems that have plagued public safety agencies across the state.
Employees who’ve joined the public sector since 2006 are all currently on a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan that doesn’t guarantee payouts in retirement. Combined with the fact that state employees have also been opted out of Social Security, it’s raised serious concerns about whether public employees can depend on having enough money to retire.
While there’s been bipartisan support for providing this roughly 2,300-employee group a secure retirement, the legislation faced bitter opposition from far-right Republican Reps. Kevin McCabe, of Big Lake, and Tom McKay, of Anchorage, who worried that the legislation would lead to long-term financial ruin for the state. They also worried it’d open the doors for teachers to seek a dependable retirement.
“This is not going to stop with fire and law enforcement,” McCabe said on Thursday. “The teachers are going to want to be in, and there will be lawsuits.”
(The bipartisan Senate Majority has also expressed interest in reworking the state’s retirement system, hinting at a broader approach that would include teachers.)
McCabe and McKay peppered the legislation with complaints that ranged from accusing public safety agencies of making up numbers about recruitment and retention problems to complaining that the legislation—which is largely the same as a bill that passed the House in the last legislative session before stalling in the Senate—was moving too fast and has been “jammed” through the committee process. McCabe is vice-chair of the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee.
At Thursday’s hearing, McCabe offered an amendment that would bar overtime hours worked in the final five years of a first responders’ career to count toward their retirement benefits. He suggested workers are working overtime in order to boost their retirement payments at the risk of the public safety, only offering anecdotal evidence of an officer falling asleep in a squad car.
The aspersions of public safety workers didn’t sit well with other legislators, including Soldotna Republican Rep. Justin Ruffridge, a moderate who has expressed support for reworking the state’s retirement plans.
“Some of the comments around the amendment are that our police or public safety employees would potentially willingly put people in danger in order to personally benefit or get more money in retirement,” he said. “I’m not certain what others’ experiences are with our public safety employees throughout Alaska, but I want to say that my experience with them is that these are the ultimate professionals. They would not put the public at risk in order to personally benefit.”
In another exchange, Sitka independent Rep. Rebecca Himschoot responded to McCabe’s claims that the legislation had been rushed by noting the legislation has been on the table for weeks ahead of the session.
“I was just going to on this amendment point out I think this bill was pre-filed, so we’ve had quite a bit of time to get our ducks lined up, but I’m new to this,” she said. “It just seems like we’ve been here for a while.”
McCabe responded by arguing that pre-filing legislation doesn’t mean it gets heard and continued his complaints that the legislation was being rushed.
“I get that you’re new,” he said.
Himschoot responded that the legislation has already passed the House before.
At one point, committee Chair Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel, said the back and forth was veering into the territory of personal attacks and that he wouldn’t allow it to continue.
McCabe’s amendment was eventually voted down with only him and McKay supporting it. The committee’s two minority caucus members—Reps. Himschoot and Donna Mears, D-Anchroage—voted against it along with majority Reps. Ruffridge and McCormick.
The vote to advance the legislation out of the committee was the reverse with only McKay and McCabe voting against advancing it to its next committee.
The legislation still faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House. It has three additional committees of referral ahead of it, which is a high number of referrals typically aimed at squelching legislation opposed chamber leadership. Still, the support of majority members like Ruffridge and McCormick would suggest that the issue isn’t a strictly party-line issue and may find bipartisan support in its other committees.
It is not scheduled to be heard in the House State Affairs Committee, its next stop, next week.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
