By Gal Tziperman Lotan
Orlando Sentinel
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — When Orange County Deputy Scott Pine joined the Sheriff’s Office in May 2011, the husband and father had important financial decisions to make for his family.
Because he was joining the Florida Retirement System, Pine had to choose between a pension plan, where he would contribute to a trust, or an investment plan, where his retirement savings would be put into the stock and bond markets.
Pine, a former bank manager who knew how to invest, chose the latter, thinking he would have many more years to save for retirement and better provide for his wife, Bridget, and their kids.
But on Feb. 11, 2014, Pine was shot and killed in the line of duty. Since then, Bridget Pine has been struggling financially to take care of their three children: Haley, 7; Ryker, 5; and Maddox, 2.
“I am a working mother, and I’m trying my best to take care of my children and give them everything [they] need,” Bridget Pine said during a news conference Thursday advocating for the expansion of benefits for fallen officers’ families. “I shouldn’t have to worry about bills piling up in the future because my husband, my children and myself gave the ultimate sacrifice. And this should not be this way.”
Had Pine chosen the pension fund, his wife could have received 50 percent of his pay for the rest of her life.
But with the investment fund, Bridget Pine received the amount her husband managed to save in his two years and nine months on the force; a one-time payment from the Florida death benefit for fallen law-enforcement officers; the promise of a federal death benefit, which the family is still trying to get; and nothing more.
“He was a banker, a manager and was very successful at it. So naturally, someone with that background would choose that,” said retired Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who is lobbying for legislation changes. “Even though you know that you risk your life every day, no one ever thinks that it’s going to be them.”
Perry said he wants legislation that gives families of officers killed during an assault in the line of duty 90 days to switch from the investment plan to a pension.
He would also like surviving spouses to receive 100 percent of the fallen officers’ pay for the rest of their lives.
Perry’s draft proposal, dubbed the Deputy Scott Pine Survivor’s Pension Plan, which has not been filed with the Legislature, would apply retroactively to any law-enforcement officers killed five years before it becomes law.
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings stood alongside the Pine family during Thursday’s news conference in a show of support for expanding the survivor benefits.
Perry’s proposal comes a week after a similar bill was unanimously approved by the state’s Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee in Tallahassee.
The Tallahassee bill, filed by Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, and co-sponsored by Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, would apply to law enforcement and corrections officers at the state level, such as Florida Highway Patrol troopers, killed on duty on or after July 1, 2015.
If the bill passes, spouses and children of law-enforcement officers with pension funds killed on duty would receive 100 percent of the fallen officers’ pay for 25 years.
The bill, which is awaiting a vote in the state’s Committee on Community Affairs, would also allow local counties and municipalities to adopt similar programs for their law-enforcement agents.
Hays said he would be open to having the bill apply to officers such as Pine who were killed before July 2015.
“I’ve thought about it, and I certainly don’t object to it,” Hays said. “I haven’t seen the numbers to know what kind of financial liability that would put us against.”
Copyright 2015 The Orlando Sentinel