Encourage lawmakers to pass pension reform Write your legislators, sign up for text messages

Publish Date

The House plans to take up Senate File (SF) 2620, the pension reform bill, on Sunday, May 21. Due to end of session negotiations, the bill can be heard anytime between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. We will send out notice via LegAction text notification and post to social media if we learn of a narrower time window.

We are encouraging any MAPE employee, who wants to help create a showing of support, to stop down at the Capitol on Sunday after 12:30 p.m. The Legislature has not scheduled their floor session for Sunday, but based on the schedules from this week, they won't be on the floor before then.

Sign up for our LegAction text notification (text the word LegAction to 55000 -- one word, any combo of caps) to receive up-to-the-minute updates on when important legislation is being debated.

We encourage everyone to take a minute and write their legislators one more time to bring this bill to a vote. Find your legislators here and ask them to please pass a clean pension bill.

The bill would reduce the unfunded pension liability of Minnesota pension funds by over $3 billion immediately upon adoption of the legislation, and save $6 billion in future costs, ensuring full funding of nearly all plans at the end of the amortization period. Reforms for MSRS general and correctional plans include:

  • Elimination of subsidies in the calculation of early retirement benefits.
  • Changes in actuarial assumptions for investment rate of return from 8 to 7.5 percent.
  • Elimination of deferred augmentation or interest paid to a retiree who postpones retirement benefits until a later age.
  • Elimination of the COLA until a retiree reaches normal retirement age.
  • Reduce COLAs for retirees from 2 percent to 1 percent for five years and 1.5 percent thereafter.
  • Contribution increases of .25 percent in 2019 and in 2020 for employees, and .375 percent each of the two years for employers. Correctional plan employees will see a .5 percent increase while the employer will experience a 6 percent increase spread over the next four years.
  • Resetting the amortization period to 2048.