Finance committees pass RI pension bill

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The House and Senate finance committees passed the sweeping Raimondo-Chafee pension overhaul bill on Thursday night, setting the stage for votes by the full chambers next week.

The House Finance Committee voted 13-2 in favor of the bill, with Rep. John Carnevale, D-Providence, and Rep. William San Bento Jr., D-Pawtucket, voting against. The House committee met for less than a half-hour.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 10-1 in favor, with the lone opposing vote cast by Sen. Frank Ciccone, D-Providence, spokesman Greg Pare said.

All state lawmakers will return to the Statehouse next Thursday, Nov. 17, for floor debates and votes on the bill. The House will start at 2 p.m. and the Senate will start at 4 p.m.

"We'll do better on the floor," Carnevale told union lobbyists as he shook their hands following the committee's approval of the measure, which was bitterly opposed by labor leaders. Thousands of workers and retirees protested it in a rally on Tuesday.

The amended bill unveiled Wednesday evening suspends cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for all workers, though an interim COLA may be awarded every fifth year if the pension fund's investments preform well. It also raises the official retirement age to 67 with some exceptions and puts most workers into a hybrid plan.

"The proposed plan would be unprecedented, both in terms of the employees it would affect and the scope and scale of changes to their benefits," the Pew Center on the States, a Washington-based research group, wrote in an analysis of the proposal last week.

The bill would immediately reduce the state-run pension system's unfunded liability from $7.3 billion to roughly $4.1 billion, and save taxpayers roughly $300 million in additional deposits to the fund in 2012-13, according to an analysis by the House and Senate fiscal advisors. The pension fund's shortfall would gradually be closed over a 25-year period.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi's Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi