Committee hears gaps in line-of-duty death benefits for Utah public safety employees

At the Retirement and Independent Entities Committee’s first meeting of 2025, lawmakers and Utah Retirement Systems (URS) staff reviewed statutory and programmatic differences in benefits that apply when a public safety employee dies in the line of duty and identified gaps affecting newer employees under tier 2 retirement options.

The discussion mattered because tier 2 members who choose the defined-contribution (401(k)-style) option may have only a modest account balance early in their careers, leaving survivors with much smaller lump-sum payments than beneficiaries of the hybrid/defined-benefit option. “We started to learn about the…holes here,” said Senator Owens, referring to cases that highlighted differences between tier 1 and tier 2 benefits.

URS general counsel D. Larson and URS analyst Corey Cox summarized how state law defines a line-of-duty death and how benefits differ by plan and division. Cox said the statute (Title 49) treats a line-of-duty death as one “that results from external force, violence, or disease occasioned by an act of active duty as a public safety…