Please click here and ask Gov. Jindal to sign SB 6 into law!

SB 6 by Sen. Butch Gautreaux (D-Morgan City) deserves to be signed into law on its own merits. But its passage became even more urgent when three bills allowing retirees to return to work without losing their whole retirement benefit were tied to SB 6 in the waning days of the legislative session.

Those three were amended by House/Senate conference committees, and cannot go into effect unless the governor signs SB 6, which would require employers which withdraw from the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana to pay their proportionate share of TRSL’s unfunded accrued liability.

These are the bills that depend on adoption of SB 6 before they can go into effect:

• HB 417 by Rep. Page Cortez (R-Lafayette) is the most comprehensive of the bills. It would allow retired teachers to substitute without penalty as long as they do not earn more than 25% of their retirement benefit. The reason for the 25% limit? Rep. Cortez told reporters “We didn’t want to give an incentive for a teacher to retire so they could go back and double dip.”
• HB 369 by Rep. Gary Smith (D-Norco) says that teachers who were enrolled in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan on June 30, 2010, may work in an adult education or literacy program administered through a K-12 school as long as they do not earn more than 25% of their retirement benefit.
• HB 150 by Rep. Hollis Downs (R-Ruston) says that retired higher education professors may return to work as adjunct professors, as long as they do not earn more than 25% of their retirement benefit.

Please click here and ask Gov. Jindal to sign SB 6 into law!