Lawmakers passed a bill May 7 that makes changes to the state\u2019s school retirement plans.<\/p>\n
LB553, introduced by Omaha Sen. Jeremy Nordquist, creates a new tier of reduced benefits for employees under the School Employees Retirement System (SERS) who begin work for the first time on or after July 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
The new benefits tier will take into account a five year salary average to determine benefits instead of the three year average used currently. The maximum cost-of-living adjustment will be 1 percent instead of the current 2.5 percent adjustment figure. The changes will not apply to members of SERS prior to July 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
The bill also makes a series of other changes to the plans, some of which include:
\n\u2022 the state statutory contribution rate will be increased from 1 percent to 2 percent of total compensation of all school employees beginning July 1, 2014;
\n\u2022 the amortization method in the School Employees Retirement Act will be changed from level dollar to level percentage of salary beginning July 1, 2013;
\n\u2022 eligibility for membership in the school retirement plan will be changed from 15 hours per week to 20 hours; and
\n\u2022 the sunset will be eliminated from the school budget and lid exclusions for expenditures above the Class V employer contribution rate of 7.37 percent and the school employer contribution of 7.35 percent.<\/p>\n
LB553 also incorporates provisions from three other bills introduced by Nordquist.<\/p>\n
LB554 applies the provisions of LB553 to all Class V school employees hired after July 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
LB305 changes the amortization method in the Nebraska State Patrol Retirement Act from level dollar to level percentage of salary beginning July 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
LB306 changes the amortization method in the Judges Retirement Act from level dollar to level percentage of salary beginning July 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
Senators initially voted 27-8 to approve the bill, which was insufficient for passage of a bill with an emergency clause. Nordquist filed a motion to reconsider the vote, which was adopted, and the body voted to pass the bill with the emergency clause 34-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers passed a bill May 7 that makes changes to the state\u2019s school retirement plans. LB553, introduced by Omaha Sen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-11795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retirement-systems","tag-sen-jeremy-nordquist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11873,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795\/revisions\/11873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}