Committee favors retirement modifications bill; clarifies 'bona fide' termination and adds council members

The Retirement and Independent Entities Committee on Oct. 25 voted to favorably recommend a committee bill titled "Retirement Modifications," a package of primarily technical and administrative changes to Utah retirement law.

The bill would: create a uniform definition of "bona fide termination of employment" across Title 49; add three seats to the Utah Retirement Systems (URS) membership council (the director of the Department of Human Resource Management, a local school board member and a district superintendent); clarify that judges' tier 1 retirement is not transferable to tier 2; allow the attorney general and certain senior attorney general staff an exemption from URS if they opt in; authorize the URS executive director to delegate appeal rulings to a senior management member; and explicitly prohibit a member or participant from permanently relinquishing a defined benefit or defined…