Despite that this is just the conclusion of the second week, the news in this update is material, positive, and likely sets the tone for the entire session on ATRS, its legislative package, and on ATRS retirement legislation generally. On Wednesday, I met with the 4 leaders of the Joint Retirement Committee along with Governor Hutchinson's staff office. The meeting was very positive and focused on protecting the members of ATRS and protecting the financial strength of ATRS. 

The Joint Retirement Committee's leadership is Representative Douglas House, House Co-chair; Senator Bart Hester, Senate Co-chair; Representative Gary Deffenbaugh, House Vice chair; and Senator Blake Johnson, Senate Vice chair. During the meeting, two important themes should be highlighted right now. First, the leadership would not support any effort to merge or consolidate ATRS or any other Arkansas public retirement system and has no expectation that such a proposal will be introduced in this session. That is great news for ATRS members! 

The second theme is that the leadership is focused on maintaining the financial strength of ATRS and agrees that ATRS should have the tools and mechanisms necessary to react to downturns in the financial markets or changes in actuarial standards to pay all earned and lawful benefits. This meeting theme aligns with the legislative package of the ATRS Board. 

The meeting was meaningful and productive. ATRS is grateful to the committee leadership and Governor Hutchinson's staff for having this important meeting with ATRS. The committee leadership and governor's staff dedicated a long period  of time on a very busy day to fully discuss the issues on ATRS and retirement. The meeting set the tone for the approach of the leadership and ATRS for the session. ATRS executive staff is very appreciative for their time and candid discussion.

At this point, two (2) of the 20 ATRS package bills have been introduced. Hopefully, the remaining 18 package bills will be introduced by the end of next week. Members of the General Assembly have committed to sponsoring bills for ATRS and will do so next week. The deadline to file retirement bills is January 27th. By the time you receive the executive director update next week,  a clearer picture of all the bills in the Joint Retirement Committee will be known.

This week, Senator John Cooper of Jonesboro introduced the first 2 ATRS package bills. SB141 is a bill that gives the ATRS Board authority to modify the formula that prevents unfair manipulation of salary in the final average calculation. SB142 is a bill that helps ensure the independence of the ATRS internal auditor by placing the employee performance evaluation with the ATRS audit committee. Thank you, Senator Cooper for assisting ATRS on these important bills. 

This update has an attachment that is a session update and an attachment that summarizes the 20 ATRS legislative package bills plus a summary of the one additional bill that impacts ATRS. Next week should have much more activity both on ATRS package bills and potentially other bills.

Remember that ATRS has a new website that allows members to have direct access to specific member account information. Now approximately 9,200 members have direct account access to individualized 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 also 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 9,500 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 13,000 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, beneficiaries, government officials, and the public. 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 3,100 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 join over 800 others by following events at ATRS and issues of interest on the ATRS Twitter page. Remember that ATRS is here to serve you! If you have questions, email me or call.

Respectfully,

George Hopkins

(501) 682-1820 Office
(501) 318-5998 Cell
georgeh@artrs.gov

Click on the following document for more information:

1. Session Update

2. Bill Summary