Baldelli Hunt Proposes Pension Reform Amendment

Rep. Lisa Baldelli Hunt (D-District 49, Woonsocket) has submitted an amendment to the proposed pension reform legislation to help cities that contribute to Social Security for their educators.

According to a press release, the representative says the amendment addresses one of her concerns with the bill, and that she would prefer that legislators and local officials have more time to study the bill in depth before any action is taken on it.

“This is an extremely important issue, and we need to get it right," said Baldelli Hunt. "I want to be certain that the bill addresses the problems we’re facing and doesn’t contain any surprises. I agree 100-percent that we need pension reform. But we need to completely understand the bill and know that it isn’t going to leave us with a different set of problems.”

The representative's statement mirrors concerns she expressed during a meeting with earlier this month. In the face of pressure to pass the reform bill and save Woonsocket from a potential $6 million increase in obligations, Baldelli Hunt explained she would not vote for a bill she described as "unfair."

Her amendment addresses what she calls an inequity in relief for the 17 communities that pay into not only pensions but also Social Security for their school employees.

Woonsocket, along with Providence, Pawtucket, Warwick and 13 other communities, pay into Social Security for school employees, so those employees will receive state teachers’ pensions and are also eligible to receive Social Security pensions when they retire. Federal law prohibits those communities from opting out of Social Security for those employees now, but because relief provided by the pension bill would apply only to municipalities’ contributions to local and state pensions, not Social Security, the cities who contribute to Social Security for their school employees would receive no relief for the portion they pay toward Social Security.

“In order to be fair and provide proportionate relief for struggling cities, the bill has to reflect that some cities are required to fund two separate retirement plans for their teachers, Social Security and the state pension plan. This pension reform bill is still just as much of a burden on these local communities, it’s just going into a different system,” she said.

Baldelli Hunt’s amendment, which she plans to introduce when the bill is debated on the House floor, would provide reimbursement to municipalities for their contributions to Social Security, prior to calculating their education aid, or possibly as a line item in the annual state budget. Woonsocket’s contribution to Social Security on its teachers’ behalf is about $2 million annually.

“For a city like Woonsocket that’s struggling to keep the streetlights on, that’s a lot of money. We desperately need pension reform, but we need it to work for every struggling city and town as well as the state. It’s a very complicated matter, and I want to see us handle it with the thoughtful deliberation necessary to make it successful,” she said.

“We can’t just blindly pass this bill because we’ve been told it’s pension reform. We need to understand it, change whatever needs changing to make it work as well as possible for the people of our state, and then monitor the results carefully to make sure it does what it’s supposed to do.”

The joint House and Senate Finance Committees are scheduled to meet for a possible vote on the pension reform bill proposed by Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and State Treasurer Gina Raimondo today. It is expected to come before the full House and Senate Nov. 17.