The 90th General Assembly is now underway. The first week of a new General Assembly is always filled with ceremonial events. The first week is usually spent "starting the engine" of the legislative process. The first week included the official filing of 138 bills. In the 89th General Assembly in 2013, a total of just under 2,500 bills were filed. Based on past history, you should expect the pace and activity of the 90th General Assembly to pick up significant energy and speed in the next few weeks. The ATRS Board has a 7-bill legislative package that was developed for this session. At this time, 4 of the 7 bills have been introduced and ATRS has potential sponsors prepared to introduce the remaining 3 bills in the coming days.
The members and alternates of the Joint Public Retirement & Social Security Committee, commonly referred to as the Public Retirement Committee, are now in place. The Public Retirement Committee has a House and Senate Co-Chair and a House and Senate Co-Vice Chair. The Public Retirement Committee leadership has extensive legislative experience and knowledge. The Public Retirement Committee has 10 Senate members, 10 House members, and House alternates. The Public Retirement Committee has extensive experience, practical knowledge, and significant prior committee experience. The first meeting of the Public Retirement Committee has not been set, but may be on January 26, 2015. Since it is a Joint Committee, meeting times are harder for the leadership to schedule and not interfere with other meetings and events. The Public Retirement Committee has typically met on Monday mornings.
During the session, ATRS staff will try to provide an executive director update once a week to provide members with current information about the legislative session. The update will provide the current status of all ATRS Board package bills, other bills that may affect ATRS, and a general update on important matters at the session. This update has 3 attachments that include 1) a general statement about the beginning of the 90th General Assembly, 2) information about the membership and function of the Public Retirement Committee, and 3) a bill status and explanation summary. ATRS staff looks forward to this session and will work hard to keep members informed and will attempt to answer questions that arise during the session.
Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. Retirees can see all the details on totals and deduction on monthly benefits. T-DROP members can see all past and current deposits and interest payments. T-DROP retirees with a CBA account can see monthly benefits and the current status of the CBA account. Active members can see service and salary amounts along with a handy benefits calculator to see how retirement would look now or at a future time. Over the last year, ATRS has focused a major amount of energy to redesign the website to be more user friendly with updated information and forms. ATRS now has over 3,000 registered members since registration started on August 1st. The available information and interactive ability of member access will be enhanced over time based upon member input and resources. 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: August 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 the Executive Director Updates page. Now, over 7,000 people have signed up to receive this executive director email update and other ATRS information via this email list. In addition, over 10,000 people have access to the ATRS executive director updates via the listserve, member internet access, and employer access. 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 under the name of Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Over 1,800 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 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
Respectfully,
George Hopkins
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