Week 7 at the General Assembly was a busy week on ATRS legislation, despite the weather conditions that caused many meetings to be cancelled and state offices to close for brief periods of time. SB171 was a shell bill by Senator Bill Sample that is now amended into an active bill to assist ATRS in clarifying military service credit. This means that the original 7 ATRS package bills have now increased to 8 package bills. All but 2 of the ATRS bills (HB1078 and SB171) have passed out of the Public Retirement Committee, 2 bills have been signed into Acts by Governor Hutchison, 3 bills are awaiting the Governor's signature, and the recycling tax credit bill (HB1132) is in the Senate Committee on Revenue and Taxation. This update has 2 attachments, the weekly update on the session and the bill summary with the current status of all bills.
The last two ATRS bills are on the Public Retirement Committee's agenda to be heard on Monday, March 2, 2015, and hopefully will be favorably reviewed by the Public Retirement Committee. ATRS is hopeful wintry weather does not impact the Public Retirement Committee meeting on Monday. ATRS staff remains very busy working on legislative issues and working with legislators to provide updates and input on projects involving ATRS. ATRS appreciates the helps from many legislators this session.
Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. Active members, retirees, T-DROP participants, and CBA account holders can see relevant and specific account information. Active members can access a handy benefits calculator to see how retirement would look now or at a future time.
ATRS now has over 3,800 registered direct access members since registration started on August 1st. Here is the link to an update that provides instructions on the 10 to 15 minute process it takes for a member to register to have direct access to specific ATRS account information: https://www.artrs.gov/general/director-updates/716-08-15-2014-executive-director-update-the-new-atrs-website.
If you have not signed up to obtain the executive director updates through your private email address, you can obtain the executive director update on the ATRS website. The update attached to this email is also available on the ATRS website at https://www.artrs.gov/general/director-updates. Now, almost 8,000 people have signed up to receive this executive director email update and other ATRS information via an email listserve. In addition, over 10,000 people have access to the ATRS executive director updates via 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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