Finally a statewide Retirement Association for Corrections

 There's now the Minnesota Correctional Officer Retirement association for PERA Correctional Plan members.

It's about time! With all of the scheming to weaken our pension this is overdue.

I joined, I encourage all of you to join. It's dues free.

Here's the website: MNCORA.ORG

To join email MNCORA@protonmail.com

September Pension Working group update

 September 911 Dispatcher Pension Workgroup Update:

The meeting started out with numerous presentations on how  busy 911 dispatchers are.

 

The Statewide Director of Communications from the State Patrol brought up that their dispatchers are now trained on how to give medical advice over the phone, I’m assuming CPR, prior they didn’t do that. He shared the story of a car crash call where a dispatcher gave that help to a person on the scene over the phone and how it ended well.

 

I pointed out that is the difference between Dispatchers and CO’s. They give advice over the phone, CO’s are required to perform CPR and get exposed to blood and body fluids from inmates. We have physical contact they do not.

 

The Executive Director of the LCPR, stated they are still waiting for more surveys to come in (we should have by next meeting). From what she saw most wanted to be in the PERA Correctional plan for the 1.9% payout and the 55 retirement. They are still waiting on many surveys from Cities, Counties, Unions and employers regarding their positions.

 

The Communications Lieutenant from  Itasca County asked how CO’s got the Correctional Plan. I told them I was there at the early meetings in the late 90’s. Multiple Unions came together. We were opposed by Police and Fire, especially the MPPOA. We hired lobbyist Bob Johnson and were able to document higher injury and workers comp rates than even Police and Fire. It was based on inmate contact. If a CO blows a knee, they can’t work. If a dispatcher does, they can still sit at a desk.

 

Because the dispatchers want to go from a 1.7 payout in the General Plan to 1.9 in the Correctional I brought up the fact ours hasn’t been improved since its inception. We were told by the legislature back then, “you have your pension don’t come back. “ I put Doug Anderson of PERA and the Executive Director of the LCPR on notice. That if they want to add dispatch to our pension we will push for equity with the State Correctional Plan of a 2.2% payout.

 

The main direction appears to be adding them with credit for their years of service, something I pointed out we never had. I lost 9 years from the PERA General Plan when we switched. No CO working at the time had credit transferred into the Correctional Plan. A CO is 50% vested at 5 years and fully vested at 10.  We had to wait to get vested.

 

They want full vesting at 5 years.

 

Doug Anderson Executive Director of PERA made a presentation showing it will cost, estimated on his calculations, $79 million to add them to our plan! He said to be exact there would have to be an official actuarial study. It could be as high as $90 million! The Executive Director of the LCPR, stated the State had not provided money for an actuarial study! So at this point there is no exact number for the cost to our pension or where that money would come from.  And disability numbers were not included which would raise the numbers even higher.

 

*There were several actuarial studies done when creating the PERA Correctional Plan.

 

I gave them a final point to ponder. If they get the 55 retirement in our plan what about the gap between 55 and 65 for their health insurance? They said they didn’t want to open that can of worms. Their employers might not want to either. There’s nothing requiring them to continue covering them.

 

We don’t meet again until November.

 

 

 

8/27 meeting

 I was in the Iron Range at a family emergency and missed the meeting. I was able to obtain a video of it.

These are my observations:

The Committee chair and most of the work group refer to inmates we work with as 'clients.' It seems a ploy to diminish the danger in the corrections field.

They spent a lot of  time trying to figure out how to get around the inmate contact wording in our pension. The Statewide Director of Communications for the State Patrol, equated our "front line" contact with "clients"  as equal to dispatch contact on bad calls. 

Because the square peg didn't fit in the round hole the Chair asked and received confirmation that could be done simply by getting the legislature to change the definition of who fit in our pension.

A couple of members rightly brought up the opposition they're likely to face from CO's and from the Probation Officers who were denied in 2003.

Another point they kept arguing was that a dispatcher gets 'nothing' when they retire. They arrive at that by woke math. They take their actual retirement date, which is 65 then calculate it at a 55 retirement date with 10 years of penalty deductions. That comes to something like 40% of their full retirement if they stayed until  65. 

Doug Anderson, PERA Executive Director brought up the reality that adding dispatchers to our pension could cost as much as $350,000 each for those at or near retirement. That also brings up the reality this would decrease the number of dispatchers, not increase it.