The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
In the legislative session that just ended, “lawmakers voted to increase the pension contributions of just about everybody else in state government but themselves. They let a bill to increase their own retirement contributions die,” The Albuquerque Journal is reporting.
House Bill 18, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, would have increased annual contributions from legislators to their pension funds from $500 to $600. The fact that it died is interesting. But what happened along the way is at least as fascinating.
From the Journal:
“The House, in a largely symbolic show of solidarity with state and education employees, voted last month to increase the contribution to $600.
“On Friday, the Senate voted to make it $750, but it also voted to change the formula used in calculating the pensions of legislators. The formula change would have had the effect of increasing their pensions.”
The Journal points to an example of what would have happened if the Senate proposal had become law: A legislator retiring after 10 years in office would have paid “just $250 more in total contributions but would have collected $188 more in each year of retirement.”
The bill died because the House refused to accept the Senate changes, and the Senate ran out of time to decide whether to give in to the House.
Read the full Journal article here.