Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mike Johnston
Colorado General Assembly | 200 E. Colfax Avenue | Denver, CO 80203 | 303.866.4864
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C.R.S. 24-54-108 Id. (defining a Defined Contribution Plan as a retirement plan that provides an individual account for each participant. The benefits for that account are based solely on the amount contributed by the participant, including income, expenses, gains, losses, or forfeitures of other account from other participants). 3 Id. 4 For example, Denver public employees receive their retirement benefits are administered by the Denver Employees Retirement Plan (DERP), http://www.derp.org/about_us.asp. 5 Colorado County Officials & Employees Retirement Association, http://www.ccoera.org/about/whoweare.html. 6 Id. 7 Id.
administered by local counties, municipalities, or political subdivisions, which have 5 governing board members, COCERA has a 7 member governing board.8 Colorado courts have interpreted Art. 2 11 of the State Constitution to protect vested pension benefits from modification. However, any unvested benefits can be subject to modification, and any adverse modifications to partially vested benefits must be offset with corresponding beneficial modifications.9 National Context: State and local retirement plans vary widely from state to state, as do statutory provisions allowing modifications to those plans. Similarly, state court opinions vary widely on state and local governments ability to modify public employees contractual rights in their retirement plans.10 Some state constitutions expressly preclude modification to public employee retirement benefits,11 while other states convey those rights through statute or case law.12 Many of those court decisions rest on the premise that employees are not entitled to any specific term of the plan, but rather are entitled to the substance of the benefit which they should reasonably expect to receive. Bill Provisions: Grant authority to local government retirement plan boards to modify the benefits and age and service requirements for public defined benefit pension plans for public employees. Those boards cannot modify the benefits of those plans that have already vested, or of those employees who are eligible for retirement as of the date of the proposed modifications. The boards may provide notice to those employees whose plans will be modified. Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal note for this bill at this time.
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C.R.S. 24-54-107; COCERA, http://www.ccoera.org/about/whoweare.html. See Police Pension & Relief Board v. Bills, 366 P.2d 581 (Colo. 1961); Peterson v. Fire & Police Pension Assn, 759 P.2d 720 (Colo. 1988) cited in National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS), State Constitutional Protections for Public Sector Retirement Benefits, http://ncpers.org/Files/News/03152007RetireBenefitProtections.pdf (last visited Feb. 22, 2012). 10 NCPERS, http://ncpers.org/Files/News/03152007RetireBenefitProtections.pdf. 11 Those states include Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan and New York. Congressional Research Service, State and Local Pension Plans and Fiscal Distress: A Legal Overview, FN 28 (2011), http://www.nasra.org/resources/CRS%20state%20and%20local%20legal%20framework%201104.pdf. 12 Id. at 5-6.