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Sponsor seeks to exclude private‑paid ‘detail’ hours from retirees’ annual hour limits; NHRS warns of enrollment implications
Summary
House Bill 702 would exclude privately funded extra‑duty hours (details) from the annual calculation that can limit retired law‑enforcement officers’ work; New Hampshire Retirement System cautioned the rule could require new reporting and, over time, could lead to re‑enrollment if retirees average full‑time hours.
Representative Fred Doucette, sponsor of House Bill 702, told the committee the bill would clarify that extra‑duty or detail hours — typically paid by private contractors rather than by the municipality — should not count toward the annual work‑hour limits that apply to retired law‑enforcement officers.
Doucette said the change is narrowly targeted: the bill would not cost the state and would allow communities to retain retired officers for short‑term details such as traffic control or construction site security without pushing retirees over the statutory hour cap. "This piece of legislation would lay that out clearly in statute," he told the committee. "This is very narrowly crafted for the outside detail stuff."
Nut graf: Sponsors and police‑association witnesses argued the change would help towns that rely on retired officers for intermittent, privately paid details — common in summer or event seasons — without affecting pension funding. The New Hampshire Retirement System (NHRS) cautioned the committee that hours and compensation remain relevant for determining whether a retiree has effectively returned to full‑time service.
Mark Kavanaugh, deputy counsel and compliance officer for NHRS, said the system must consider the factual hours worked over a period when determining whether a retiree has resumed full‑time service. "If we were to find that over time ... a retiree was averaging 40 or more hours a week ... we would restore that person to active service, their pension would cease, and they would be re‑enrolled as an active member," Kavanaugh said, noting the retirement system would still need employer reporting of hours and might need separate reporting categories for special duty.
The New Hampshire Police Association and the New Hampshire Troopers Association testified in favor, saying the change would have no state cost and would increase local flexibility to staff details. Committee members pressed for clarity on tiers of membership and how special‑duty pay currently affects benefit calculations; NHRS staff said tier C members (hired on or after July 1, 2011) are already excluded from having special‑duty pay counted toward pension calculations, which complicates the policy tradeoffs.
Ending: The committee closed the public hearing and referred House Bill 702 to the pension subcommittee for further study to resolve technical reporting and policy questions.
