TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A push to steer public employees away from the state’s pension plan appears unlikely to pass for the second year in a row.
House Speaker Will Weatherford has made changes to the Florida Retirement System one of his top priorities. And each time it has stalled partly because of the pushback from a coalition of recalcitrant Democratic and Republican senators.
It happened again on Wednesday, when the Florida Senate refused by a 21-15 vote to take up the pension bill passed last Friday by the Florida House. The vote came just three days before the 60-day annual session is scheduled to end.
“We’ve always known that it wasn’t going to be an easy lift,” Weatherford said. “I would say nothing is ever dead until day 60. But there’s no question that the bill is probably in some pretty big trouble.”
Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby and the Senate sponsor, said he had no intention to push the legislation again this year.
“We’re not going to try to resurrect it at this point,” Simpson said.
This year’s bill was scaled back from a more ambitious proposal that also died last year in the Senate.
The bill passed by the House would stop newly elected officials and top employees in state government from enrolling in the state’s traditional pension plan starting in 2015.
The legislation would also automatically place newly hired public employees in an investment 401(k) plan if the employees failed to make a choice within eight months of starting their jobs.
Simpson argued changes were needed in order to shore up the finances of the pension plan, which has nearly 1 million current and former public employees enrolled in it and roughly $130 billion in assets.
“This is a very solid plan to address that future potential problem,” Simpson said.
But senators pointed out that even though the state pension plan is not 100 percent funded it is still considered well-funded among such plans.
“If we got a good system why are we changing it?” asked Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee. “Why are we mucking with this?”
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