Senate Finance Committee co-chair Anna MacKinnon has questioned if the proposals to increase local contributions for two state retirement plans are needed this session after seeing savings estimates.
She says the indications from the analyst’s numbers show a significant drop in the state liability and if that’s the case, there may not be a reason to move the bills forward.
The bills were introduced last week as an effort to further reduce state costs.
SB 209 calls for raising local governments’ contribution toward public employee retirement from 22 percent to 26.5 percent by July 1, 2018.
SB 207 proposes local contribution to teachers’ retirement to rise from 12.56 percent to 22 percent by July 1, 2019.
A section of SB 210 would allow municipalities to change the current $150,000 property tax exemption for seniors older than 65.
An analyst provided the numbers to the committee but Legislative Finance Division Director David Teals says he’s not clear on the reasons behind them.
He says the data shows that the estimated state contributions go down for the PERS and TRS in fiscal year 2018 but by different percentages.