Legislative Update: 5/28/08
Last week the House met to decide whether to concur with Senate changes to House bills or to non-concur and possibly request committees of conference. In layman’s terms, we were deciding whether to take it, leave it, or duke it out.
Republicans made a few last-ditch efforts to kill some bad bills (such as HB 1436, the evergreen clause bill and HB 1309, redefining tax-free “cigarillos” as taxable cigarettes) and attempted to modify the House Ways & Means Committee revenue estimates (HR 28) which ridiculously predict that revenue from the gas tax will remain constant over the next two years despite the fact that they’ve already been declining for a few months. Unfortunately (and predictably), all these efforts failed.
The biggest battle of the day was over HB 1645, a bill to reform the state retirement system. The House plan was favored by the cities and towns because of its measures to “stop the hemorrhaging” of the retirement system (in the words of the Democrat Chair of the Executive Departments & Administration Committee), while the Senate version was favored by the public workers unions. It’s an excruciatingly complicated issue, but a recent Concord Monitor editorial effectively summarized the major differences between the two plans:
The House passed a tough plan to bring the funding level up to snuff; cities and towns support it. The Senate plan accomplishes many of the same goals while preserving more benefits for employees. The House plan, for example, raises the retirement age for police officers and firefighters from 45 to 50. The Senate plan does not. The House plan replaces four public employee slots on the 14-member board of trustees with people with financial expertise. The Senate plan retains the overwhelming employee majority on the board.
The House plan does the better job of bringing public employee pension and health care benefits in line with times that are harsher for taxpayers and private-sector employees. It also saves taxpayers more money in the long run. Since adopting the House version could cause court fights that could slow or stall progress, progress will take compromise.
I must commend the Concord Monitor’s editorial board for endorsing the House version of the bill, but I should note that when they write that “the House version could cause court fights” they really mean “if the House version is adopted, the public workers unions will go bonkers and use every means at their disposal, including lawsuits, to prevent these necessary changes from being implemented.”
Right now, certain members of the House and Senate are meeting to draft a compromise version of the bill. I’ll keep you posted as to the outcome.