Retirement legislation activity is really winding down after 11 weeks into the legislative session. After 11 weeks of the legislative session, the nine (now ten) ATRS bills (the ATRS appropriation bill and eight ATRS Board package bills plus the new recycling tax credit bill) are well along in the legislative process. Eight of the ten bills are now Acts and completely through the legislative process. The first recycling tax credit bill (HB1132) is no longer viable and dead for the session. It has been essentially replaced by a tenth bill that involves recycling tax credits on another ATRS investment, Big River Steel. All eight new Acts also had an emergency clause and the emergency clause on all eight also passed. So 8 of 10 bills are law, one is dead and one bill has one vote left on the House floor.
The new package bill is the more recent tax credit bill, SB844, that has passed the Senate and received a "do pass" motion from the House Revenue and Tax Committee this morning and had no opposition. Representative Monte Hodges did a great job of presenting SB844 in committee this morning.
SB844 was created through many hours of discussions and negotiations. ATRS thinks SB844 will benefit ATRS and the State of Arkansas by allowing the state to have a better controlled tax credit impact each fiscal year while providing a steady income stream to ATRS over a period of years not only on Phase I of Big River Steel, but on future expansions of the steel facility.
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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