The 90th General Assembly met from January 12, 2015, through April 2, 2015, for 81 days before a recess in anticipation of adjournment. The ATRS Board had a 9 bill package plus the ATRS Appropriation Bill for the coming fiscal year that starts July 1, 2015. The ATRS package bill on recycling tax credits was replaced by another bill on recycling tax credits for Big River Steel. Of those 10 bills, 9 became a law and one died when the session ended. I have attached the final summary of bills that became Acts of Arkansas that affect ATRS, along with a narrative that summarizes the results of the Session for ATRS.
Many thanks are due to the General Assembly, Governor Hutchinson, and his staff. ATRS is grateful to the sponsors of the ATRS legislative package and to those that presented ATRS legislation in the House and Senate. The Public Retirement Committee Co-Chairs, Representative David Meeks and Senator David Johnson, along with the members of the Public Retirement Committee were always ready to assist ATRS and its members. ATRS is now in the process of implementing the legislation that was passed into law.
ATRS is now in full preparation mode for retirement season. As the school year winds down, ATRS is having a much greater volume of member contact on retirement and benefits. In the next 15-20 days, ATRS will provide its annual T-DROP and retirement planner through an executive director update.
Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. Now 4,000 members have direct account access to account information. Here is the link to the instructions to sign up: https://www.artrs.gov/general/director-updates/716-08-15-2014-executive-director-update-the-new-atrs-website.
You can sign up to obtain these executive director updates through your private email address. Updates are made throughout the year such as at retirement season and other times when information needs to be shared. Now, over 8,000 people have signed up to receive this executive director by listserve email. You can find the link to sign up for listserve delivery to these updates here: https://www.artrs.gov/login.
In addition, over 10,000 people have access to the ATRS executive director updates via direct email delivery. It is always a great pleasure for ATRS staff to learn of more ways to provide information to ATRS members, employers, and beneficiaries. The ATRS Board is committed to providing a system that is member friendly and transparent.
You can also get helpful ATRS information on the ATRS Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/arkansasteacherretirementsystem under the name of Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Over 2,300 Facebook users get updates via the ATRS Facebook page. Go to the Facebook page and "like" ATRS to get daily updates. I try to go to the Facebook page every day to post information and answer member questions about ATRS. In addition, if you use Twitter, you can follow events at ATRS and issues of interest by finding the Twitter ID of ATRS or find George Hopkins in the Twitter directory. The link is https://twitter.com/atrs. ATRS is here to serve you!
Respectfully,
George Hopkins
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