Current Legislation

This Legislative update page is designed to keep you informed on possible or actual legislation that may or will have an impact on our pension system's operation, our pension benefits, or our healthcare benefits. If the Ohio House (HB) or Senate (SB) Bill is highlighted, put your "cursor arrow" on it and "click". By doing this you will go into the Ohio Legislative Website, where you can get more detail on the Bills. When you are done "click" on the "Back" button and you will be able to return to this page.

PERI is constantly working to make retirees' desires known to the Ohio General Assembly.

LOCATING YOUR STATE SENATOR AND / OR REPRESENTATIVE

If you call 1-800-282-0253, the operator will be able to tell you the name and phone number of your state Representative and state Senator.

LAST UPDATE January 30, 2012.

With the beginning of the 129th General Assembly on January 3, 2011 a flood of new legislation that may have a positive or negative impact on our pension system and our benefits made their way onto the docket.

Fiscally required retirement plan updating legislation was delivered to the Ohio Retirement Study Council (ORSC) in the fall of 2009. It took until this year for the legislature to put it into bill form. In the House it is HB 69, and in the Senate it is SB 3.

A flurry of activity and beginning testimony was being heard until the budget bill, HB 153, was introduced. The budget bill contained a change in the pension contributions rates, moving 2% from the employer side to the employee side.

Because this switch would have caused unfunded liabilities to the retirement system (OPERS), PERI and OPERS began a joint endeavor to get that provision removed from the bill. [See testimony below.] Our testimony and the follow up from our members resulted in this provision being removed from the bill.

We are now confronted with members of the ORSC wanting to waste more time and money purportedly to further verify the actuarial projections supplied by the retirement system and verified by the ORSC's actuary. The more the ORSC procrastinates the more unfunded liabilities accrue.

February and March are going to be important months to motivate our legislators into immediate action on HB 69 and SB3, known as the pension legislation bills.

We are asking our members to call, write, email, or otherwise communicate with your State Representative and Senator.

The three documents below will help you understand the problem, so that you have the answers to not only motivate your representatives into legislative action.

House Bills

H.B. No. 69 Sponsored by (Representative Watchman)

Click on the H.B. number to see the text of 2011 Pension reform bill. We will be following this pice of legislation as it works its way through the Ohio House committees, and will inform you of any concers or actions we deem necessary to protect our pensions and benefits.

H.B. No. 153 Sponsored by (Representative Armstutz)

Click on the H.B. number to see the text of 2011 Budget bill. The original inclusion of a change of pension contribution rates has been removed from the current substitute bill. We keep you posted if anything changes.

H.B. No. 202 Sponsored by (Representative Hollington)

Click on the H.B. number to see the text of the bill. This legislation deals with pension offests in cases of retiring and rehiring by an OPERS employer.

H.B. No. 323 Sponsored by (Representative Dovilla, M)

Click on the H.B. number to see the text of the bill. To add extortion and perjury to the felonies committed by a public retirement system member while serving in a position of honor, trust, or profit under the law governing the forfeiture of retirement system benefits and the termination of retirement system disability benefits.

Senate Bills

S.B. No. 03 Sponsored by (Senator Faber)

Click on this line to search for any other Ohio House or Senate Bills.

The Government Pension Offset rules (Spouses and widow(er) ) are explained in Social Security’s publication No 05-10007.

The Windfall rules (worker) "A Pension From Work Not Covered By Social Security" are explained in Social Security’s publication No 05-10045.

PERI has been waging a campaign for the elimination of the offset provision since 1983. Every year since, proposed legislation to eliminate the provision has ended up in a House Ways & Means Committee sub-committee. That is a nice way of saying that they were ignored because there was not enough political pressure to push the legislation through congress. For our statement before the committee click on the following link:

There are currently several bills under consideration. You can "Click" on the links below to learn the specifics of each Bill.

Prior to congressional adjournment in December of 2011, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Senate version of the Social Security Fairness Act (S. 2010), which would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). The bill is a companion to the House version (H.R. 1332), introduced earlier last year by Representatives McKeon (R-CA) and Berman (D-CA). The GPO and WEP take away Social Security benefits earned by many public employees. The Social Security Fairness Act would fully repeal these penalties. Please contact your United States' Senator, and urge him, or her, to cosponsor the bill.

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