This week, the House and Senate met in 62 committees of conference. I was on one, HB 1109. This had started as a requirement that public employers provide written notice of any suspension from duty, detailing the reason for the suspension within seven days. The Senate had made some wording changes and limited it to employees eligible for a collective bargaining agreement. The also added 23 positions in Corrections that were being transferred from Group I to Group II!
The changes to the suspension notice were not contested, except for limiting which employees were involved. The Senate readily agreed to go back to the House definitions, and we agreed with their wording tweaks.
The Corrections positions were a problem, as there was no fiscal note and we felt there should be one! So we heard from Corrections that these positions were coded as Group II in their files, have been paying into the pension system as Group II, and were identified as mismatching the division of personnel’s database by an audit. The pension system reported that they had the documentation from Corrections that these positions were Group II and they had been included in the actuarial analysis, so there was no fiscal impact to them.
We heard from Personnel that the current system allowed the departments (Corrections, here) to change a position’s pension rating with no confirmation, and as they are changing to a new database, they have incorporated a formal confirmation step for that type of change going forward. I was also reassured that once they looked for mismatches, they had confirmed that other Group II positions (in the Department of Safety) had the proper documentation.
So, with no fiscal impact, and checks and balances going forward (as of July, in fact) so that we shouldn’t see this issue again, and new management at the department of corrections, we agreed to accept these positions. I made a wording change to say they were “recognized” as Group II, not transferred to it, since that would imply they actually had been Group I – which would have significant problems!
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