By Lauren Dorgan
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — Police officers and firefighters are balking at legislation that would increase the retirement age for new hires to 50 years old, from the current age threshold of 45. They argue that the proposal would dampen already-difficult recruitment efforts and would do little to plug the hole in the state’s cash-strapped retirement system.
“From our perspective, we believe it’s going to have a catastrophic effect on law enforcement in New Hampshire,” said Mark Dumas, president of the Concord Police Patrolman’s Association. “We have a recruiting problem. ... Now you’re talking about taking a 20-year career and pushing it back.”
But several critics said the vote in the House, which could come as soon as today, is a foregone conclusion, and they’re already looking ahead to the Senate and Gov. John Lynch to stop the proposal. The age increase is part of a wider bill aimed at overhauling the state’s retirement system, which is short about $2.7 billion on its long-term obligations.
“We anticipate that the House will pass it,” said Bradford Police Chief James Valiquet, one of the point men on the legislation for the police. Part of the problem, Valiquet said, is that the legislation has evolved rapidly, with a final 23-page amendment released the day the bill passed a House committee last week. “Every time we turn around, there’s another amendment to this bill. ... It was sprung on us,” he said.
The Professional Firefighters of New Hampshire has fired up its e- mail list and hired its own actuary to figure out the impact of various proposed changes to the retirement system.
“We’re going to be talking to the Senate,” said union President David Lang. He argued that the plan had ramifications that hadn’t been weighed: “By changing the age requirement, you’re going to hurt recruitment and retention. You’re going to increase costs on disability retirements.”
Proponents of the age change say that it would move New Hampshire’s age standards closer to those in the rest of the nation and that it would bolster the retirement system over the long term.
New Hampshire’s current standards for police and firefighter retirement - 45 years old and 20 years of service - are on the lowof the spectrum nationwide and are lower than the other New England states, according to the report of a commission that studied the state’s pension system.
Vermont has mandatory retirement for police at 55 and early retirement at 50. Maine has a patchwork of plans offered on a town- by-town basis, but the most common threshold is 55 years old and 25 years of service, according to Chris Gianopoulos, deputy executive director of the Maine State Retirement Program.
“I don’t think we have any that are, just, you could retire at age 45,” she said.
Nationwide, many retirement plan standards were crafted in the 1930s and 1940s, when life expectancies were drastically lower than they are now, said Keith Brainard of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators.
State Sen. Harold Janeway, who sat on a commission to study the retirement system, said he thinks it makes sense to increase the retirement age for firefighters and police officers.
“I realize that firemen and policemen are taking risks that the rest of us don’t face,” he said. “But 20 years and then the ability to retire and then go on to do something else means that you might be paying retirement for at least twice as many years as the person worked.”
Lang argued that firefighters have strenuous jobs that takes a heavy physical and emotional toll. He said citizens should want their firefighters sturdy and young.
“When Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Main Street calls, says their house is on fire and they’re trapped, you want athletes going into that building,” Lang said. He compared fire work to the military and athletes. “Do we want a 50-year-old quarterback? A 50-year-old lineman? A 50-year-old foot soldier?”
The age change is part of a larger bill that would make a suite of changes to the retirement system, including changing the makeup of the system’s board - cutting the number of employees and adding investment experts - and ending annual increases to a health insurance subsidy for many public employees.
Police officers and firefighters contend that the age change will do little to fix the retirement system’s funding gap because it would affect only new hires, not those already in the system.
“This really doesn’t touch that pension obligation of 2.7 billion,” Lang said. “All it does is it once again lowers the employers contribution.”
The retirement system hasn’t run numbers on the increased retirement age proposal, but it did look at the savings if the firefighter and police retirement age were raised to 55, the age called for under an earlier proposal. That would save the system between $10 million and $15 million a year, Chairwoman of the Retirement System Board Lisa Shapiro said last week.
The legislation going before the House this week may not mollify the other constituency that’s got a big stake in retirement: the cities and towns that pay a significant piece of the bill. The Local Government Center, which represents towns and cities around the state, has been raising money for a potential lawsuit, saying that employers should not be charged extra to pay for a health subsidy. Their claim is that the state would be violating a provision in the New Hampshire Constitution banning “unfunded mandates.”
While the LGC supports reform proposal, the legislation alone may not prevent a suit, said John Andrews.
“If they’re still transferring the money, it’s still an issue,” he said.
Janeway said that even if the payoff is long term, it’s worth it to make the changes now.
“The nature of these liabilities are that they are long term, and so the liabilities have been growing so much more rapidly than the assets. That’s how we’ve ended up with this large unfunded accrued liability,” he said. “It’s sort of like the climate change thing, and the longer we wait to take the necessary steps the longer it will take to get those C02 levels down.”
Copyright 2008 Concord Monitor