A bill initially presented as a way to give retired teachers cost-of-living pension adjustments goes to the governor.
The House passed the Pension Improvement Act after some back-and-forth over the fact it deals with all Oklahoma state retirement systems. Rep. Todd Thomsen said cost-of-living adjustments may not be the only thing a proposed new revolving fund pays for.
"It's for the improvement of the pension funds," Thomsen said. "And that could be reducing the liability or that could be by providing a COLA, so one of the two may be the most important at the time."
The bill would set up a revolving fund to pay for cost-of-living adjustments or pay down liabilities for all Oklahoma state retirement systems.
Rep. Wade Rousselot was among those taking issue with the bill, which was presented as dealing with teacher’s pensions.
"If you'll read the title on the bill as we're presented, it does not reference teachers' pensions," Rousselot said. "If we're going to not correct it today, we're going to have a precedent where we're going to have misleading things on the board, and I think that would just lead to chaos."
Thomsen said teachers unions he spoke to agreed to the bill’s wording.
"To get it passed, we had to include in there that it wasn't just for COLA, but it was also for debt reduction," Thomsen said. "And so I think some of the specifics of that is still down the road, because we haven't even identified the funding source."
Despite not having a funding source identified, the bill passed 60–23.
