2015 Legislative Bulletin #2

Legislative Bulletin Number Two, 2015

• First, I want share with you that we have formed a coalition of stakeholders who receive public pensions. Our board voted to join this coalition, and we are working together on the pension bills for this legislative session. Some of the members are AFSCME, ISTA, AFT and your association. We have held several meetings to decide how we would combat the push in this session to move newly hired public employees (including teachers) from the Defined Benefit (pension) to the Defined Contribution (401K) method of providing retirement income.

• Second, we have also had meetings with some of the ISTAR officers to find ways in which we could work together to finally get a COLA for our retirees. I attended a second meeting with the ISTAR president and a staff member today. We are united in looking for any way that we can find to persuade the leaders in the legislature that it is time for a COLA!

• In numbers there is strength, and we are estimating that among these groups, we may have as many as 200,000 voices. That number includes you. SEE OUR LEGISLATIVE TAB ON THE WEB SITE FOR TALKING POINTS ABOUT THE DB/DC ISSUE. www.retiredteachers.org

• I testified at the House Employment, Pension and Labor Committee Wednesday on two of the bills that will affect our pensions.

• Bill 1493 is authored by Representative Cherry. The summary from the General Assembly web site follows:

• House bill 1481 had language in it that made it difficult for us to support. However, it was amended twice during the committee meeting, and we now support it. I am not going to put the summary here because the amendments that changed it have not yet been published. They may go on later today, but since they change the bill, we won’t have the correct summary at this time.

• Both bills passed out of this committee and will be sent to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Things to do immediately:

1. Send thank you notes to the author and co-authors of HB 1493 at 200 W. Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204
2. This time the hand-written note is preferable to the email.

Representative Robert Cherry-author
Representative Woody Burton
Representative Martin Carbaugh
Representative David Niezgodski

3. Send thank you notes to the author and co-authors of HB 1481
at the same address.

Representative Woody Burton-author
Representative Martin Carbaugh
Representative Timothy Harman

And to those who added amendments:
Representative Martin Carbaugh
Representative David Niezgodski

4. Send a thank you to Chairman Douglas Gutwein who heard our bills.

Address envelopes as
The Honorable ____________

Correct greeting:
Dear Representative ___________:

We will soon be asking you to contact the House Ways and Means committee members. Here are their email contacts for future reference.

Chairman Tim Brown h41@iga.in.gov
Robert Cherry h53@iga.in.gov
Michael Karickhoff h30@iga.in.gov
James Baird h44@iga.in.gov
Randy Truitt h26@iga.in.gov
Jeffrey Thompson h28@iga.in.gov
Daniel Leonard h50@iga.in.gov
Mike Braun h63@iga.in.gov
Steven Davisson h73@iga.in.gov
Todd Huston h37@iga.in.gov
Peggy Mayfield h60@iga.in.gov
Sharon Negele h13@iga.in.gov
David Ober h82@iga.in.gov
Harold Slager h15@iga.in.gov
Holli Sullivan h78@iga.in.gov
Matthew Ubelhor h62@iga.in.gov
Greg Porter h96@iga.in.gov
Ed Delaney h86@iga.in.gov
Terry Goodin h66@iga.in.gov
Sheila Klinker h27@iga.in.gov
David Niezgodski h7@iga.in.gov
Cherrish Pryor h94@iga.in.gov
Gail Riecken h77@iga.in.gov
Steve Stemler h71@iga.in.gov

Thank you for your support!
Nancy, Steve, and Tom

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