Teachers’ Advocacy Prevents Changes to Retiree Health Benefits and Merger of STRB; Spousal Death Benefit Improved

Teachers’ Advocacy Prevents Changes to Retiree Health Benefits and Merger of STRB; Spousal Death Benefit Improved

CEA retirees on the Stirling Medicare Supplement Plan will not see an increase in their health insurance premium share percentage, thanks to legislators who listened to teachers’ concerns and voted down Governor Malloy’s proposal. The governor’s plan would have shifted a portion of the state’s cost of retiree healthcare to plan members, forcing them to pay 26 percent more for their health insurance. Also, no changes were made to the $110 monthly subsidy paid to retirees on local board of education plans.

The state, however, is not fully-funding the retired teachers’ health insurance plan, and CEA will continue to advocate for the long-term financial stability of the fund and lobby the legislature and governor to restore the full state appropriation next year.

STRB Merger Fails

Legislators also rejected another proposal by the governor to merge the State Teachers’ Retirement Board (STRB) into the Office of the State Comptroller. This victory allows the Board to remain autonomous to make key decisions, including selecting the retired teachers’ health insurance plan and hiring its administrator.

Active Teacher Death Benefit Improved

Due in large part to CEA’s efforts, the legislative proposal to allow the wife of a recently deceased teacher to collect her husband’s earned pension passed unanimously this session. Joe Connolly, a South Windsor teacher, died unexpectedly in November. Because he was eligible for retirement at the time of his death, his wife expected to qualify for pre-retirement Plan D which would pay her his accrued monthly pension (with a slight reduction) for the rest of her life. Sadly, she learned from the Retirement Board that he had not named her as his beneficiary; he had named his father who is now deceased. It appeared that when he married years ago, he forgot to change his beneficiary designation to add his wife. As a result, she was not eligible to receive the Plan D benefit since the law specifically requires the surviving spouse to be named as the sole primary beneficiary. Instead, she would have received only a minimal monthly benefit which was significantly less than the pre-retirement Plan D benefit.

CEA worked with his wife and family to obtain a legislative remedy since that was the only way to change the outcome. After months of hard work, the General Assembly passed a bill (dubbed “Justice for Joe”) that changes the law to allow a surviving spouse or civil union partner (CUP) of an eligible teacher who dies to be automatically offered pre-retirement Plan D, even if the spouse or CUP was not the sole named beneficiary. If a teacher for some reason does not wish to offer that benefit to his/her spouse, the teacher will now need to proactively waive that. This puts the onus on the teacher to reject pre-retirement Plan D rather than to remember to name a spouse as the sole primary beneficiary.

A similar issue arose in 2009 with another CEA member who died unexpectedly and had not named her spouse as her beneficiary. He, too, was denied pre-retirement Plan D. This legislation will provide him with his wife’s earned teacher’s pension as well.