Panel backs letting judges work longer
Bill boosts age limit to 72 before benefits eliminated
Judges and justices would be allowed to work two more years than state law currently allows without losing their retirement benefits under legislation endorsed by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Retirement on Monday.
The committee also recommended approval of legislation to allow local police and fire retirement plans to reduce retirement benefits for their members upon the approval of the plans’ board of trustees under certain conditions.
Both bills are headed to the House of Representatives.
Under state law, judges and justices who do not retire by age 70 lose their retirement benefits. However, a judge or justice who turns 70 during a term of office to which he has been elected may complete the term without forfeiting his retirement benefits.
House Bill 1202 by Rep. Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, would extend the age limit to 72.
The bill would apply to circuit judges, members of the Arkansas Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court justices in the Arkansas Judicial Retirement System, said committee actuary Jody Carreiro.
Shepherd said the Legislature established the retirement age of 70 for judges in 1965, and “there apparently was a judge that maybe some members of the Legislature wanted to see off the bench.”
“The age seems to me arbitrary. There is no factual study that I am aware that [explains] why age 70 versus any other age,” he told the committee. “No other branch of government has an age limit. Federal judges are appointed for life.
“Being 70 today is not the same as being 70 in 1965. The movement across the country has been to do away or extend these mandatory retirement ages.”
The Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission was created in 1988 and “essentially can take action in the event that a judge maybe should retire or step down from the bench for health reasons that become apparent,” he said.
Shepherd said his bill “potentially affects at least one judge in my judicial district,” whom he didn’t name.
“I have not spoken with him directly and I have not looked to try to determine what judges potentially would be impacted by this bill or wouldn’t be impacted by this bill,” he said. “I would certainly be one to favor doing away with the mandatory retirement age,
but I understand the political realities at hand in the Legislature, and that’s why I am merely asking that the retirement age be bumped back by two years.”
Two years ago, state Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, withdrew his bill to allow judges to serve additional terms after turning 70 years old without forfeiting their retirement benefits, and the committee’s co-chairmen said the bill lacked the votes to clear the committee.
Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Bigelow, on Monday asked whether Shepherd’s bill would “affect [current] Supreme Court justices.”
Shepherd said he “has not looked into that because [the bill] stands on its own merit,” adding that he has read at least one report that the bill wouldn’t help Chief Justice Jim Hannah.
Afterward, state Supreme Court spokesman Stephanie Harris said Hannah “hasn’t had a chance to look at it, so he doesn’t want to respond until he has,” when asked if the bill would affect him.
HB1202 will generate “a small amount of savings” to the Arkansas Judicial Retirement System, Carreiro said in a written report to the committee.
In other action, the committee also recommended approval of HB1216 by Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville, over the opposition of three representatives for firefighters.
The bill would allow the board of trustees for a local firefighter or police pension plan to decrease all payments to all eligible beneficiaries “by an equal portion” to the level recommended by the actuary for the state Fire and Police Pension Review Board.
The trustees would have this option if the fund is determined by the actuary to be actuarially unsound or “to be in substantial risk of ruin” before all beneficiaries receive their lifetime benefits.
Whitaker said the bill “would allow our closed local police and fire pension boards, if they choose, to reduce benefits in order to avoid insolvency.”
At least two-thirds of the members of the local firefighter or police board of trustees are beneficiaries of these pension plans, “so I don’t think that there is any real danger that the beneficiaries are going to willy-nilly start cutting their own benefits,” said Fayetteville City Attorney Kit Williams.
“They would only do that under the most extreme circumstances where their pension plan would likely go bankrupt and then they would suffer a much more substantial cut in benefits if the pension plan runs dry.”
But Roger Smith, a former state representative who represents firefighters opposed to the bill, said the plans’ funding sources always will be in place, “so there will never be a point in time when they get to zero.”
“They will never run out of a pension check in any way, shape or form,” he said.