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URS previews technical administrative bill to clarify definitions and membership council roles
Summary
URS general counsel outlined planned technical and administrative changes to retirement statutes, including standardized definitions of separation/termination, clarifications for judges and conversions between tier statuses, and a request to expand membership council representation for employer stakeholder groups.
URS general counsel Dee Larson told the committee about an annual bill URS plans to bring that will make technical and administrative clarifications to retirement law, including standardized definitions, membership council adjustments and other non‑substantive code cleanups.
The matter is informational for the committee because proposed statutory clarifications affect administration of retirement benefits and governance and may be considered in the legislative session as technical amendments.
Larson said the bill will propose moving common definitions (for example, bona fide determination of employment/separation of service) into a central chapter so the terminology is consistent across defined‑benefit and defined‑contribution provisions. Larson said the change is intended to be non‑substantive — a uniform terminology rather than a policy change — and would cover references such as the judges’ retention of tier‑1 status and conversion rules where members change tiers.
Larson said the membership council, a stakeholder advisory group formed in the 1980s to give employers and employee groups a voice while preserving the board’s investment‑focused composition, had asked to engage additional employer representatives such as the superintendent/school boards association and an executive‑branch representative because the state is the single largest employer. Larson said the membership council received the proposal positively at its recent meeting and that URS staff is working with stakeholders and drafting attorneys on the language.
Other items cited for the technical bill include a title change for the former deputy director position to the managing director of retirement (to align statute with current titles), an attorney‑general request for parity on certain senior staff exclusions, and a statutory clarification to reflect federal tax law limitations around a member’s permanent relinquishment of tax‑deferred benefits (Larson said federal law restricts members from relinquishing certain tax‑deferred retirement benefits, though beneficiaries may have different options). Larson said the bill is being drafted and URS will bring it back to the committee for review.
