Panel hears HB 702 to exclude extra-duty details from retiree-hour limits; retirement system warns of reporting complexity

Representative Fred Doucette presented House Bill 702 to the committee, asking the panel to exclude contractor-funded "extra duty" or detail hours from the annual hours limit that applies to retired law enforcement officers.

Under current practice, a retired officer may be limited to 1,352 hours a year (with some members grandfathered at 1,664), a cap intended to prevent a retiree from effectively returning to full-time service while drawing a pension. Doucette told the committee the bill would exclude outside detail hours (usually paid by private contractors or special events) from the statutory hour cap so that retired part-time officers could continue serving on privately funded details without reducing their permitted annual hours under the retirement statute.

"This does not cost the state a penny," Doucette said. "It does not leverage anything other than the ability to define for the New Hampshire retirement system that extra duty hours are not part of that 1352 calculus." He argued the change would assist recruitment and retention and that details often generate municipal administrative revenue.

Mark Kavanaugh, deputy counsel and compliance officer for the New Hampshire Retirement System, told the committee the system does not take a position on policy but raised operational risks. Kavanaugh said that even if extra-duty compensation is not used to calculate retirement benefits for Tier C members, the system must still count hours for enrollment purposes. "If we were to find that over time, say a 6 month or a year long period, a retiree was averaging 40 or more hours a week... then we would restore that person to active service, their pension would cease, and they would be re-enrolled as an active member," he said. Kavanaugh also noted existing reporting requirements (RSA 100-A:16) and said employers must continue reporting retiree hours to the retirement system; administratively, the system would need a bifurcated reporting structure to separate special-duty hours.

Representatives and witnesses — including the New Hampshire Police Association and member associations for troopers, prison staff and fire departments — supported the bill's intent while committee members pushed for clarifications about Tier C distinctions, reporting requirements and potential unintended consequences. Committee members asked whether the bill would create an inconsistency by making extra-duty pay not count toward retirement while those same hours counted before retirement; Kavanaugh replied that the question is a policy choice for the legislature.

The committee closed the public hearing and referred the bill to the pension subcommittee for further study and drafting to resolve the operational and policy tensions Kavanaugh described.