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Plymouth urges state to reclassify harbor masters as first responders for pensions
Summary
Plymouth officials asked the Joint Committee on Public Service to advance a home rule petition (H.2749) to reclassify its harbor master staff into a higher retirement group, saying the employees perform law‑enforcement and emergency response duties comparable to police.
Representative Kathleen LaNatra urged the Joint Committee on Public Service on behalf of Plymouth to support House Bill 2,749, a home rule petition to reclassify Plymouth harbor masters and harbor master division employees into Group 4 for retirement purposes. The proposal would align their retirement classification with police and firefighters and make prior years of service count toward the higher classification.
The change matters because Plymouth’s harbor master division is a unit of the Plymouth Police Department and its members are POST‑certified officers, the witnesses said. “We are duly appointed as harbor masters and police officers, therefore subject to the same standards, training and requirement to be POST‑certified police officers,” Chad Hunter, harbor master of the town of Plymouth, told the committee.
The nut graph: proponents said harbor masters perform dangerous, physically demanding public‑safety work — enforcing laws on the water, responding to medical emergencies, conducting search and rescue and managing pollutions incidents — and that retirement classification should reflect those duties.
Proponents described local approval and broad municipal support. Tom Kelly, chairman of the Plymouth Retirement Board and a retired police veteran, said the change would affect a small group and “there’s no impact to the retirement system,” adding the employees already “paying 9 plus 2” in contributions. Dale Webber, an elected member of the Plymouth contributory retirement board and of the representative town meeting, said the local boards, police chief, town manager, select board, advisory and finance committee and representative town meeting had approved the petition.
Speakers emphasized training and statutory context. Hunter said the Massachusetts Harbormaster Training Council and the state Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commission clarified in 2022 that harbormasters appointed by a police department are law enforcement officers under M.G.L. c.6E and therefore subject to POST certification and the training standards that accompany it.
Opponents or formal objections were not presented in the transcript; the bill remained at the testimony stage and no committee action was recorded during the hearing.
The request now is for the committee to report the home rule petition favorably so the legislature can consider it. Proponents asked the committee to recognize the local decision and advance the bill.
Ending: If advanced, the bill would proceed through the legislature as a home rule petition; no committee vote or amendment was recorded during the hearing.
