Bill to reassess military credit makes cut-off in House

A bill to reassess the way military service credit for state retirement plans is awarded to veterans who have been deployed narrowly made cut-off in the Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

Prime sponsor of the bill Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Kitsap said the idea for the bill was originally brought to her by sheriff’s deputy and Navy Reserve member Donald Meserve.

Rolfes said when she first introduced the bill, she thought only a small number of people would qualify and the impact would be relatively small. The original text called for the Law Enforcement Officers and Fire Fighters Retirement System Plan 2 (LEOFF 2) to add conflicts in which participants did not receive a combat medal, such as Operation Noble Eagle, to those eligible for service credit.

After input from police and firefighters advocacy groups, Rolfes and Rep. June Robinson D-Everett decided to hold off on implementing the bill and Robinson added a striker amendment to replace the original text. The striker would study the current retirement system and recommend changes in policy or current law to allow more service members who may otherwise not be eligible to receive credit for their time overseas.

Rolfes said she thought it was important to at least start the process on some sort of change in the way service credit is counted, because of the changes in the modern military and reliance on reserve members.

Meserve, who served in the Navy Reserve for 25 years and was mobilized four times, said not all participants in overseas operations receive medals and that bars many veterans from being eligible for service credit.

“I see that as making the service of some people worth less than the service of others,” Meserve said. “I totally disagree with that. I think it’s arbitrary. You have a lot of support personnel that are not necessarily directly in the combat zone because they do logistics. … Everybody is supporting the operation.”

Rep. Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn voted against the bill in committee. He said he was concerned that increasing the number of service members eligible for service credit could strain the overall pension fund local firefighters and police officers are contributing to. Stokesbary said the striker amendment requiring a study was a better idea this late in the session and he needed more information on cost and impacts before he could cast a “yes” vote.

“I’m all for trying to find ways to compensate these folks,” Stokesbary said. “That’s why I hope the study bill will answer these questions a little better than we can in the next 20 days of this session.”

The bill was voted out of the Senate unanimously and passed the Appropriations Committee with 30 “yes” votes including Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Moses Lake and Rep. Cary Condotta, R-Wenatchee and two “no” votes.

SB 5661 currently resides in the House Rules Committee and awaits a vote on the House floor.