Lawmakers push to revive Senate-passed pension bill stuck in House committee

First responders gathered by the dozens outside the Alaska State Capitol in mid-April. Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, was one of several lawmakers who addressed the crowd.

“The numbers don’t lie. It’s the right move for Alaskans. So what do we need ’em to do?” Kiehl asked. “Hear the bill!” the crowd replied.

The bill is Senate Bill 88, a measure that would reinstate a pension system for state and local government workers. And in recent weeks, lawmakers have stepped up their efforts to push forward a return to a defined-benefit retirement system for public-sector workers.

Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, shepherded the bill through the Senate and is pushing House lawmakers to take action. She argues the state’s current 401(k)-style retirement system makes it hard for the state of Alaska to attract and hang onto employees.

“We need to change that so that we can recruit and retain these positive, effective workers,” Giessel said Friday.

There is some disagreement about whether it’d actually do that, but the Senate wasted no time moving the bill forward — it passed out of the upper chamber a couple weeks after lawmakers convened in Juneau early this year.

But ever since, it’s been in legislative limbo. It’s currently in the House State Affairs Committee and has yet to have a hearing, and it has two more committees to make it through before all legislation dies at the end of the regular session in mid-May.

But in recent days, the mostly Democratic and independent minority coalition has tried to move it forward. The House minority leader, Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage, asked lawmakers to discharge the bill from the State Affairs Committee in a late-night floor session on Wednesday.

“With just three weeks left in the session. I think it’s clear that this committee does not intend to hear the bill,” Schrage said.

A discharge would remove the bill from the State Affairs Committee and edge it closer to a full House vote. House Republicans, though, are resisting the call. In recent days, the House has twice rejected the minority’s attempt to take it out of the State Affairs Committee’s hands in narrowly divided votes.

Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, who chairs a State Affairs subcommittee examining the bill, said the delay is because lawmakers don’t have the full financial picture. Johnson says they’re waiting on reports from actuaries detailing various estimates of how a pension system would actually cost.

“We’re waiting for these actuarials,” Johnson said. “As soon as we get them, we’ll be in contact with the subcommittee to start hearing this and moving it forward.”

But Giessel, the main Senate sponsor, said the pending reports shouldn’t hold up the bill.

“We had asked for two more possible scenarios. They’re not material to the bill,” Giessel said. “They’re more informational about, ‘What if this? What if that?'”

Basically, there are different ways to think about how much it’d cost. One of the financial reports from a consultant hired by senators says it would more or less come out in the wash. The idea is it saves on recruiting, retention, training and so on, basically offsetting the cost. Another analysis commissioned by the Department of Administration puts the cost at $1.2 billion over 16 years, but that assumes the state’s payroll grows significantly — basically, that everyone switches over to the pension system and that they spend the rest of their careers working for the state. 

Giessel said lawmakers received the most recent analysis on April 5. She said other pending reports would change the assumptions — one would look at half of workers staying in their jobs through retirement — but she said they don’t change the need for the bill. 

Giessel said she’s pushing House leadership to move the bill forward, saying Monday she planned to meet with Speaker Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, and Johnson on Tuesday.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on the statewide call-in show Talk of Alaska earlier this month that he expected the bill to die in the House.