As expected they managed to dredge up enough votes to pass the endorsement of HB2350 by the LEOFF 2 Board. Even with all the pressure applied some board members held fast in opposition. We have been arguing here that this bill is a bad deal for LEOFF 2 as well as for LEOFF 1. Ryan Martin seems to be the only one who recognizes this danger. He articulates his position very well. Unfortunately after the machinations around this reconsideration Ryan is the voice in the wilderness. If a LEOFF 2 can't get a reasonable consideration from his fellow LEOFF 2 members how will a LEOFF 1 representative ever hope to have a voice,

This is the week for the Washington Council of Fire Fighters legislative meeting. A whole bunch of them have gathered at the Red Lion in Olympia. From there they are dispatched to the hill to corner their legislators and push the WSCFF agenda. That is a lot of fire fighters on the hill at the same time and they have had some success.
Today they managed to get a companion bill to HB2350 launched in the Senate, SB6563. They were able to drum up ten sponsors.

For LEOFF 1 folks this means it is time to redouble our efforts to contact and speak directly to our legislators and any other legislator you can corner. So pick up the phone and call the legislative hot line at 1.800.562.6000. Write an email to your legislators. Call them directly. Send snail mail. Best of all, come to Olympia and go to their offices.
This is hard work and the other side has high paid full-time lobbyists doing the grunt work. We don’t have those kinds of resources so we need individual action from our members.
Go get em!

The following was in the January 28th legislative update from the Council of Fire Fighters.

"On Wednesday January 25th the LEOFF Plan 2 Board met. Following presentations from LEOFF Plan 2 board staff, Office of the State Actuary (OSA) staff, and public testimony on the HB 2350, a motion to support HB2350 was made and was not successful. On the following day, a board member that was present for the vote voiced concern that the decision was made without full knowledge of important information and asked for an opportunity to reconsider the motion. A special board meeting has been called for on Monday January 30th at 9:00am."

I attended the January 25th meeting. Believe me there was a lot of material put forward by the LEOFF 2 Board staff, the State Actuary and in testimony. Each board member made a thoughtful explanation of his vote. No one claimed a lack of information or a need for more data.

I am pretty familiar with this bill and the claims and arguments put forward of both sides. The presentation was largely made by Steve Nelson of the LEOFF 2 Board staff. It was complete and very supportive of the bill. The board asked reasonable questions.

God know what was left out and will be presented on Monday. It makes me think that this is just another political maneuver. Sort of makes you sick doesn't it? I guess this is like the continued recounts in recent elections until the numbers could be manipulated to produce the desired results.

I hope the LEOFF 2 Board members will continue to show the sense of responsibility and backbone they demonstrated on Wednesday and send the crybabies packing.

Be sure to check out our recent article on the Windfall Elimination Tax.  The bill has been reintroduced in Congress.  Just don't get too excited about it.  It gets introduced every year and then nothing happens.  Frankly I think they just introduce the bill so they can say the support action to eliminate the provision.  That is great except for the fact that there is never any action. 

Take a look at these articles.

Senator Cantwell on the Social Security Windfall Tax

Social Security Offsets - Current Status

Repeal Social Security Offsets

Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision

They show what has been going on with this issue over time.

Well, HB2350 is out there. Currently it is in the House Ways and Means Committee and we hope that it does not get a hearing and dies. Obviously others think differently. So, people from both sides of this are actively lobbying the Legislature. Emails are flying throughout the LEOFF community throwing out talking points and making claims of everything from nirvana to apocalypse.

Unfortunately many of the claims being put forth are simply statements with absolutely no backing in data or reasoning. The idea seems to be “I said it, so it must be true.”  Depending on which side of the debate people fall, individuals are saying, “Yes, this is true.” or “No, this is false.”  They then promptly forward the information to everyone they know without further consideration.

That is just the nature of advocacy. The point is to obtain an outcome. We all know that and that is why we should make a critical evaluation of every claim.

Most of these claims are made in good faith, i.e. the person who says it thinks it is correct. But sometimes the person making the claim just focuses on those items that supports his position and conveniently leave out some of the details that could adversely affect the argument. That creates a good guy – bad guy scenario where the opposing party can then be demonized. Of course that furthers the rancor and exacerbates the difficulties in ever finding common ground.

For that reason we try to avoid making flat statements like,”HB2350 is illegal.” We try to back up such claims with legal opinions and logic. That is why you will see reviews from our attorneys posted for public view.

The fact that two individuals can read a proposed bill and come away with different understandings of what it means is not so much a question of who is right but, rather, an indication that the bill itself is not clear and is open to different interpretations. It does not mean that one person is right and the other is evil.

The heart of the problem with HB2350 is the same as with HB2097. It was done in secret and the stakeholders did not have the opportunity to work through the proposal to insure it dealt concisely with all concerns. Therefor rather than agreeing on what the words in the bill mean we are forced to make our own assessment of the meaning.

The major difference between the two sides on this bill is that we backup our understanding with legal opinions and logic. This is something the opposition has decided not to do.

Back on the 9th we had a meeting at the WACOPS office in Olympia.  All the usual suspects were there.  The point of that was to tell us that a draft merger bill was in existance and the bill would likely be introduced that day or very soon. The bill was introduced on the 12th.  It was written by the LEOFF 2 Board Director, Steve Nelson, and is every bit as bad as the first merger bill.  Like the previous bill it was developed in secret and without input from LEOFF 1.

There can be no mistaking the fact that not only did the bill writer know who the LEOFF 1 representatives are and that he knew our general and specific objections to the bill.  He made but a minor attempt to address LEOFF 1 concerns by including wording "guaranteeing" 41.26.150 disability benefits.  But, he sat the guarantee date back to 2003 and missed 41.26.030 benefits.  Worse yet he did nothing to guarantee the disability boards themselves.

But wait! There is more!

He did absolutely nothing to address the issue of governance and LEOFF 1 representation.  He did this with a clear knowledge that the current system of governance for LEOFF 2 is totally unacceptable to us.

Then came some sneaky stuff.  He stuffed the bill with wording that would effecively isolate the LEOFF board from any legislative oversite for rates, assumptions, spending or much of anything else.

Wow!  What a great deal for LEOFF 2 and what a bad deal for everyone else.

It was all done in secret.  The only difference is we got three days' notice instead of one.

 HB 2350 was entered in the House on January 12th. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Pat Sullivan and Rep. Kevin Van De Wege. Rep. Sullivan is the House Majority Leader and Rep. Van De Wege is a LEOFF II Board member and an active LEOFF II Fire Fighter.

Right now, sit down and write your legislaors.  Call them up.  Meet them for coffee.  Send them an email.  Do something and do it now.  Encourage you legislators to kill this bill - it is bad legislation.

Click here for talking points. 

Read the other articles on this site under the Categories HB 2350 and HB 2097 for more information.

• Remember to be Professional and Courteous.
• No Name Calling.
• No Threats of Litigation.

Ask your legislator where he/she stands on this issue.  Let us know.

On Monday I attend the meeting with the WA Council of Fire Fighters, WACOPS, FOP and COMPAS on one side and the Retired Fire Fighters, Retired Seattle Police and WA Retired Officers on the other.It was not pretty. Strong comments were made and offense was taken – by both sides. But emotions were high and mutual trust was low.Not a formula for a productive meeting.

Basically it was just a notification to us that a new merger proposal is forthcoming and an attempt to present the arguments for such an action.Kelly Fox set up the meeting and we thank him for that.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the new proposal that is significantly different from the previous proposal and one of the major stopping blocks, governance, remained unchanged in the new proposal.

So the lobbyists are work calling on representatives and urging them to oppose the bill.I am sure the other groups will be doing the same.

We anticipate there will be a lot of new developments if this new merger bill is officially put forward and we will be carefully examining its proposal and giving our take on the bill and the claims made by the supporters.

At this point in time, neither Fire nor WACOPS has taken a formal step to support the bill but the indications are they will do so soon.

The Governor proposed cuts in the LEOFF 2 pension contributions in an effort to save the state about $18 million -- their share of the LEOFF 2 contributions.  Overall it would withold $90 million from the LEOFF 2 pension fund over the next two years.  The individual firefighters and police officers would have lower contributions and the employers would as well.  This is pretty much the same proposal as HB 2068 that was proposed in the last session.  That bill was killed. 

WACOPS and WSCFF claim that the merger plan was put forward as a counter to HB 2068,  Somehow they see a merger as the panacea that will protect their plan using LEOFF 1 money.  Of course it does not make sense but that seems to be their story and they are sticking to it. Already they have proposed the merger to the Governor as an option to her supplemental budget proposal. 

The LEOFF 2 cuts are in the Governor's supplemental budget so they stand a pretty good change of being passed during the special session.  If that happens, then we can expect to see the merger plan trotted forward during the next session.  That means another big political fight. 

The Actuary is due to give his report on the merger plan on December 15th.  That might be the end of it, but if he comes out in favor of the the merger we can almost guarantee WSCFF and WACOPS will try again. 

 The point is, now the LEOFF 2 cuts are in the Governor's supplemental budget. If the Governor's supplemental budget is passed with the LEOFF 2 contribution reduction during this November Special Session we may see another push for the merger of LEOFF 1 and LEOFF 2. This will largely depend on what is in the merger study that will be presented to the legislature on December 15, 2011 by the State Actuary.
 
Thus far the organizations lobbying for LEOFF 1 are finding very little support of the concept of a merger from legislators.  Some have been very strong in their opposition and say the idea is dead.  We hope that is true and that it remains true.

Still, this is politics and things change rapidly.  So all LEOFF 1 folks should stay alert and be prepared to join in the letter writing and support of the organizations like RFFOW and RSPOA that are spending time and money in the lobbying effort.

The second merger study meeting will be conducted on Monday, October 17th in the Bellevue City Hall. This meeting, in contrast with the first, appears to be much more carefully structured. I suspect that is because the OSA and DRS realized that the unstructured Town Hall format did not work well.

So, they will present a bit of a dog and pony show with a nice slide show presentation telling us all about what they are doing while insisting they are not trying to create a blueprint for merger or to make any judgements about whether or not it is even a good idea.

They have provided some documentation but we have yet to see how the merger concept might shake out financially. And, of course, the legal opinion dealing with the impact of Washington State law and case law on the concept is still unavailable. The LEOFF 2 Board has such a report but refuses to release it.

At least we do have the Ice Miller legal opinion dealing with Federal issues. If anything, that report indicates that it would be a very complicated thing to merge the two plans. Why anyone continues to push for this is beyond me.

The special session of the legislature has to find some way to close a $4 billion budge gap, so we can expect they will go after pension contributions again and that will lead to another merger proposal. At least we are finding a number of influential legislators who do not appear to be seriously interested in the idea of a merger.

Stay tuned. We will have a more detailed report Monday evening.

So what gives with the LEOFF 2 Board? 

 

They entered into a personal service contract with Robert Klausner, a Florida lawyer, to review HB 2097.  While we can't find where the LEOFF 2 Board every authorized such a contract it is clearly established that the LEOFF 2 Board is his client.  The personal service contract was entered into during the time there was a freeze on all personal service contracts.  Yet the LEOFF 2 Board, with no motion or other authorization, somehow was able to sidestep this freeze and engage Klausner to study the bill.

 

This bill, HB 2097, was written by the LEOFF 2 Board Director, again apparently without authorization. 

 

Thousands of dollars have been spent on the lawyer.  A report has been provided to the LEOFF 2 Board.  We have made numerous requests for the release of that report.  They refuse citing attorney client privilege.

 

Remember, this is not a legal review of a personnel issue.  It is a review of a public policy issue.  Public funds are being used for this review.  The review was conducted by a public agency.  Hiding behind privilege is totally unacceptable in this instance.

 

This is the agency that wants to take over our LEOFF 1 pension and provide us governance for our pension.  They will be our BIG BROTHER and watch over us.

 

Not for me.  If they can't even be open about such a simple matter there is no way I can trust them to manage my pension and my pension trust fund.