LEOFF 2 board hears legislative update; board‑endorsed bill and HB 1270 headed to committee

At a brief meeting of the Law Enforcement Officers' and Fire Fighters' Plan 2 Retirement Board, staff updated members on the status of pending legislation, including one board‑endorsed bill and House Bill 1270, both scheduled for committee hearings.

Jacob White, staff to the board, told members the board has “1 board endorsed bill this session, and so the house version and the senate version have been dropped and are scheduled for hearings tomorrow.” He said he will testify in support of the House measure and that Steve will appear at the Senate hearing.

White also described House Bill 1270 as a Department of Retirement Systems (DRS)‑backed proposal that would allow local employers who offer the state's deferred compensation program (DCP) to automatically enroll employees if the employer chooses to do so. White summarized participation data from the state's experience with auto‑enrollment: “it's around last I saw it was around 90% of new state employees stay choose to stay in, the state's DCP plan, with auto enroll. And before that, it was something like 5% joined DCP.”

White said the board is watching a proposal mentioned in the governor's operating‑budget remarks that would merge LEOFF 1 and LEOFF 2 and transfer $1,000,000,000 from LEOFF 1 into the state general fund; he said no bill implementing that proposal had been introduced as of the meeting and staff would analyze any bill as soon as it was made public and send updates to board members.

The board did not take formal action on legislation at the meeting. White said he will circulate weekly updates on Fridays and will send immediate alerts if a merger bill or other significant legislation is introduced.

The update portion of the meeting lasted roughly the time between Jacob White's opening remarks on the legislative update and his closing line, “And then that's it for the Ledge update.”