This week's executive director update is attached. The General Assembly and the halls of the Capitol are now very busy places as the General Assembly prepares for the start of week three of the session on Monday. Currently, 6 of the 7 bills in the ATRS Board's legislative package are introduced.
The House and Senate are now well past the mainly ceremonial first week of the session and have gotten down to much more business in week two of the session. Both the House and Senate will reconvene on Monday. At the end of week two, 241 bills had been introduced in this session. Of the 241 bills, 95 are appropriation bills to authorize state agencies to spend money, and 146 are bills by House and Senate members on general issues and law changes. Of the 146 bills, 6 are bills proposed by the ATRS Board. ATRS has one bill of the 7 bill package that should be introduced early next week.
The committee process is now in full swing with the bills introduced so far now being heard in committees. On Monday morning, the Joint Public Retirement Committee will have its organizational meeting and will hear a presentation on actuarial processes by the committee actuary and have updates from the executive directors of the retirement systems. The busy time of the legislative session is quickly approaching!
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. ATRS staff looks forward to week three of this session and will work hard to keep members informed and will attempt to answer questions that arise in the coming weeks.
Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. Retirees can see all their benefit details on totals and deduction on monthly benefits and lifetime 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 ATRS website to be more user friendly with updated information and forms. ATRS now has over 2,500 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: 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, over 5,000 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 at http://www.facebook.com/arkansasteacherretirementsystem under the name of Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Over 2,100 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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