The Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Emergency medical service workers have asked the Legislature to add them to a state pension plan similar to those that cover teachers, troopers and other public employees.
The result, House Bill 2717, is one of several measures addressing the needs of West Virginia’s first responders.
The recent propane gas explosion in Ghent that killed four people, including two volunteer firefighters, raised the profile of another of those proposals: a death benefit for the families of such responders felled in the line of duty.
The House is scheduled to vote next week on one of those bills (HB2801), which would qualify survivors for $50,000 when an EMS worker or firefighter dies on the job.
The bill would cover volunteers as well as professional responders, and draw the benefits from the governor’s civil contingent fund.
But perhaps the most ambitious item on the EMS workers’ agenda is the pension bill, which the House Pensions and Retirement Committee amended and endorsed this week. Chairwoman Sharon Spencer said the amended version reflects input from both EMS workers and the state Consolidated Public Retirement Board, which manages the state’s other pension funds.
“I believe it is a workable bill,” said Spencer, D-Kanawha.
Public EMS workers would contribute 8.5 percent of their wages, while employers would pay 10.5 percent. The resulting benefit would be based on salary and years of service, and could equal up to 70 percent of final average salary.
But that benefit level would drop to 67 percent, and workers would have to contribute more than 10 percent of pay, if the program is not 70 percent funded by July 1, 2012.
Five of the state’s six pension plans that similarly define a benefit are at least 75 percent funded. The Teachers Retirement System is only 31 percent funded, though lawmakers have adopted a multiyear payment plan to erase its shortfall.
The other teachers’ pension plan, which the state recently closed, also is governed by the retirement board but operates like a 401(k) plan and does not have a central fund.
The bill would launch the Emergency Medical Services Retirement System in January 2008. But at least 85 percent of eligible EMS enrollees must first sign up for the program by Dec. 1.
A county commission or local government with an EMS unit would also have to elect to join the system. The bill has advanced to the House Finance Committee.
“We are aware of the bill. We’re looking at it,” Finance Chairman Harry Keith White, D-Mingo, said Friday.