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Comptroller-backed bill would move tax calculations to comptroller and study redirecting retirement medical funds into HoosierStart match
Summary
House Bill 13 92 would move certain tax-calculation duties to the Office of the Comptroller, streamline an obsolete reporting requirement, and direct a study into whether some retirement medical benefit account contributions could be repurposed to increase HoosierStart deferred-compensation matches for state employees.
Representative Clare and Comptroller Nischalla presented House Bill 13 92 to the committee. The bill would shift the administrative responsibility for calculating commercial vehicle excise and financial institutions tax distributions from county auditors to the Office of the Comptroller, while preserving local auditors'current role in dispersing funds. The change was presented as an administrative simplification supported by the Association of Indiana Counties and the Association of Indiana Municipalities.
The bill also removes a statutory notice requirement that had prosecutors and judges inform the comptroller when they become full-time or newly appointed; the comptroller's office said it had no operational purpose for that notice and sought to streamline the statutory language.
A major policy discussion in the hearing concerned the retirement medical benefit account (often called RIMBA in testimony) and whether some employer contributions to those accounts could be repurposed to increase the state's HoosierStart deferred-compensation match for employees. Comptroller Nischalla told the committee the current HoosierStart match is $15 per paycheck (about $390 per year) and has not changed since 1999; she proposed a summer study with INPRS to explore replacing certain future RIMBA appropriations with increased immediately vested HoosierStart matches so more employees benefit, noting roughly half of employees forfeit the RIMBA benefit because they leave state employment before becoming eligible.
Tony Green, deputy director of the Indiana Public Retirement System, provided background numbers used in the discussion: testimony referenced about $180 million in the retired portion of the RIMBA trust and roughly $450 million in RIMBA-related funds associated with active employees who have not vested; annual contributions into the program were described on the order of $28'$30 million (split between cigarette-tax revenue and general state contributions). Green and the comptroller emphasized the need for a study to determine the legal and actuarial implications before any change to vested retiree benefits.
The committee held the bill and asked representatives and INPRS to deliver a study and recommendations to the Pension Management Oversight Committee (PMOC) as part of the next steps.
