Work About to Begin on Benefit Improvements
October 17, 2024: State House, Boston – On Wednesday, Association President Frank Valeri was officially sworn in as our Association’s representative on the Special COLA Commission. Mass Retirees is the only retiree or labor organization with a seat on the nine-member Commission.
First proposed by Governor Healey in January, at the request of Mass Retirees, the Special Commission became law within the FY25 State Budget signed into law in July. The focus of the Commission is to investigate and recommend improvements to the State and Teacher retirees’ COLA base, as well as formulate the creation of a new senior or enhanced COLA benefit for long-term retirees.
The Commission will also examine alternative funding methods to help accommodate the cost of future COLA benefit improvements into the Commonwealth’s pension funding schedule, as well as the schedules used by the 102 local retirement systems. Both the senior COLA and funding schedule options can directly benefit all retirees and are not focused on any specific retirement system or group of retirees.
As was the case leading up to the landmark 1997 COLA reform law (Chapter 17), Mass Retirees believes that the work of the Special Commission is essential to increasing the State and Teacher Retirees’ COLA base, as well as improving COLA benefits across the 102 local systems.
In addition to Valeri, Erika Glaster, the Executive Director of the Mass Teachers Retirement System has been sworn in to serve on the Commission. Glaster represents the MTRS on the Commission.
The State Retirement Board has nominated its Executive Director Kathy Kougias as the Board’s designee to the Commission. She is expected to be sworn in later this month.
The remaining six members of the Commission are the House and Senate Chairs of the Joint Committee on Public Service (Representative Ken Gordon and Senator Mike Brady), Secretary of Administration and Finance Matt Gorzkowicz, Executive Director of the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission Bill Keefe, a representative of the Pension Reserves Investment Management (PRIM) Board, and the MA Taxpayers Foundation.
We anticipate that the Commission will be officially assembled and begin formally working to develop recommendations to improve the COLA in early November. As of now, the Commission is required to file a report recommending specific changes and improvements to COLA benefits by February 1, 2025. This deadline is designed to allow time for the legislature to review and act on the recommendations prior to the start of the FY26 budget.