This story was produced by Spotlight Delaware as part of a partnership with Delaware Online/The News Journal. For more about Spotlight Delaware, visit www.spotlightdelaware.org.
Delaware lawmakers will not hold hearings this legislative session to consider the Carney administration’s surprise multimillion-dollar decision last winter to revamp the state’s pension system for retired lawmakers, according to Senate leadership.
In an interview Monday with Spotlight Delaware just before the final days of the legislative year, Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend said lawmakers will wait until next year to consider legislation that could get the pension back to the way it was before. March change.
This change resulted in permanent pay raises for retired lawmakers and a one-time distribution of nearly $1 million in back pay.
Townsend’s comments come three months after Spotlight Delaware reported that retired members of the General Assembly would receive increases in their monthly pension payments because of an apparent failure by state officials 27 years ago to codify a law change in Delaware law code.
Prior to 1997, legislators’ pension payments were pegged to that of the highest-earning retired legislator.
In subsequent years, Delaware’s pension office implemented a more standard system, where lawmakers received payments based on a percentage of their highest years’ earnings.
But in March, state officials decided to return the pension to its pre-1997 format.
That decision — which was revealed only in a letter sent to former lawmakers on March 4 — came after officials within the Carney administration determined that Delaware’s legal code had “never been updated” after the 1997 change.
All in all, it was a curious and complicated development that prompted questions about how an apparent law change could take effect, then be repealed three decades later after government officials in the executive branch determined that the law as intended was invalid.
If not reversed, the development also promises another pay raise for retiring lawmakers at the end of the year with the retirement of the longtime Democratic lawmaker. Pete Schwartzkopf, who as former Speaker of the House for a decade would be in line for one of the most significant retirements in recent years.
After the Spotlight Delaware report in April, Townsend was among several lawmakers who expressed frustration that the Carney administration could unilaterally change a seemingly vague policy without alerting the General Assembly.
Townsend told Delaware Online/The News Journal at the time that he and his colleagues “want to understand how this happened and why lawmakers weren’t given at least a warning.”
But asked Tuesday why Senate Democrats have not yet held hearings on the issue, Townsend said he decided “the decision has been made and there is no change,” under the constraints of a six-month legislative session that ends this week. . .
Townsend further claimed that a public hearing forcing pension officials to testify would result in “too simplistic answers.” Instead, he said, it’s more productive to wait for the state’s official Compensation Commission to issue a report on legislative retirement later this year, and then act on those findings next year.
“Given that [the Compensation Committee] are about to come together in the coming months, it felt more appropriate to take this approach,” Townsend said.
REPORT SUBMITTED:Delaware made changes to its legislative pension plan 27 years ago. Why didn’t they go up?
However, the decision to wait is drawing criticism from at least one retired Republican lawmaker, who argued that lawmakers have a responsibility to act on what is essentially a political decision.
In an interview, former Republican State Sen. Greg Lavelle asked why Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are willing to pass legislation on a range of topics from electric cars to health care for state workers, “but they won’t make a decision on it?”
“I don’t understand why they are chickens about it,” he said.
In response, Townsend reiterated his belief that the Delaware Compensation Commission — which consists of six appointees who issue salary recommendations for several positions statewide — should be given time to study best practices used by legislative pensions of other states.
“That should be what drives our decision-making,” Townsend said.
How did the mistake happen?
Incidentally, it was the Delaware Compensation Commission that sits at the heart of the problem that prompted changes to the legislative pension system.
The 1997 law change that changed payments to retired lawmakers did not follow a normal legislative path, where the General Assembly reviews a bill, passes it, and then the governor signs it into law.
Instead, the change came after the state’s Compensation Commission made a recommendation that Delaware no longer peg its retired lawmaker’s pay to that of its highest-earning former lawmaker.
And, because of a quirk in Delaware’s legal code, an official recommendation from a state commission automatically becomes law unless rejected by a vote of both houses of the General Assembly.
In 1997, lawmakers did not reject the Compensation Commission’s report on legislative pensions.
As a result, the change “finally became law,” according to a March letter sent to retired lawmakers by Delaware pension administrator Joanna Adams.
“But the Delaware Code was never updated,” she said in the letter.
In an April email to Spotlight Delaware, Adams appeared to back away from asserting that the commission’s reports could become law.
Although she again noted that the Compensation Commission “had the full force and effect of law,” she also stated that adding new laws “is solely within the competence of the legislature.”
When asked whether Adams’ interpretation is correct, Robert Scoglietti, Delaware’s deputy comptroller general, pointed to state code that says commission reports “have the force and effect of law … unless the General Assembly by resolution jointly rejects the report in its entirety.”
Legislative pensions are paid by the Delaware Public Employees’ Retirement System, an office that manages and invests employee contributions from all state government. That means a large lump sum for retired lawmakers wouldn’t hit taxpayers, but would draw investable funds for other state retirees. As of June 2023, the state’s various pension funds held more than $12 billion.
Spotlight Delaware has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking any emails sent by the Delaware Pension Office discussing the decision to change pay for retired lawmakers.
The pension office denied the FOIA request earlier this month, and Spotlight Delaware has appealed the denial.
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