Comité Retirement de la Cámara de Representantes, 24 de febrero de 2026

Transcripción

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1. 0:25:17

   Folks, everybody, we're, uh, we're still waiting for a press conference to be over with. Uh, I n- need a quorum before we take up legislation, so we're just, uh, at a, uh, at a pause right now. Thank you.

2. 1:02:39

   All right. We got Debbie. We should have eight, right? Yep. We're clear. We got it. Yeah, here.

3. 1:02:53

   Okay, folks. After a long wait, we are going to get started. So we have a, a quorum now. I'm gonna ask, uh...

4. 1:03:02

   I know everybody w- it's been a long day. W- there's been a number of competing schedules. I'm gonna ask, um, uh, Chair Lady Darlene Taylor to come on up to, to the front here. We're gonna hear, hear House Bill 1234. This has been a, it's fair to say, an ongoing issue, has it, has it not, Chair Lady?

5. 1:03:20

   Yes, it has. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and present this bill. I'm working off LC-

6. 1:03:26

   Hey, folks. Let's, uh, let's, let's, uh, let's keep quiet in the back, including Chairman Hitchens.

7. 1:03:36

   All right.

8. 1:03:37

   I'm working off-

9. 1:03:38

   Go ahead

10. 1:03:38

    ... LC520970. This is a bill that has been presented and passed out of committee before. It's a very simple bill. It is allowing the state retiree life insurance to be able to assign the benefits upon a death claim. This has come up a number of times, um, over the years. It's unusual. Most insurance companies will allow you to have the beneficiary assign the benefits to pay for a funeral. This is written very tightly, very succinct, where it can't be used for any other debts.

11. 1:04:10

    It is specifically for the funeral services and those expenses. Um, I- I believe the department is okay with the bill. There's not anything unusual about it. It's something that will help the family members at the time of settlement when, uh, a retiree has passed on. That's what the bill does.

12. 1:04:29

    And Chair Lady, correct me if I'm wrong, but this, um, the issue of unpaid funeral expenses have been, has been a ongoing issue in our state.

13. 1:04:38

    It has.

14. 1:04:38

    Can you comment on that?

15. 1:04:39

    Yes, I'll be happy to. Uh, it is unfortunate, and I will tell you, it really surfaced after COVID. We had a number of, um, funeral services that were not paid, and w- the last thing we wanted was for a retired employee to have their family turned away like, "No, we won't take your insurance," and they would have trouble getting funerals. So we brought this bill to help stop that kind of problem. If you assign the benefits, and it is only for the amount of the funeral. If you have $15,000 in life insurance and it costs 10,000 for a funeral, then you would get two checks, one to the funeral home and one to the beneficiaries.

16. 1:05:14

    So it really had become an issue, and we, the last thing we would want would be, um, having a former employee and a retiree have this problem.

17. 1:05:23

    And if I may m- uh, Chair Lady, uh, this, I think this is the third term, not third year, but third term we're, we're talking about this issue-

18. 1:05:31

    Yes

19. 1:05:32

    ... in prior opposition.

20. 1:05:34

    It, it has cleared up. We made it very succinct and very, um, limited. We will not allow any other creditors. This is only for funeral expenses.

21. 1:05:43

    I understand. Um, the first light I had coming on was, um, Representative Buckner. Is it, are you 15, Debbie? Okay.

22. 1:05:53

    I just wanna make sure it had passed the muster of the funeral home caucus.

23. 1:05:58

    Yes, it did. They, they are very happy with this bill.

24. 1:06:02

    Thank you.

25. 1:06:05

    Very good. Uh, number 24. Who's that? Proper time, Mr. Chairman.

26. 1:06:10

    I'd like to make a motion to move do pass.

27. 1:06:13

    All right. I'll recognize you in just a moment. Thank you for that. Number 17. Representative Lim.

28. 1:06:20

    Yeah. Chairman Towe, thank you for this bill. I, I remember it, and I'm just curious, is, just to clarify, the, whatever confusion existed, 'cause if I'm recalling, this is very similar to the bill that we passed-

29. 1:06:32

    Yes

30. 1:06:32

    ... uh, and sent to the governor, and he had his objections. But those have all been cleared up even though it's the same-

31. 1:06:37

    Have all been cleared up.

32. 1:06:37

    Thank you.

33. 1:06:37

    It was. It was a, a misunderstanding about what it would do.

34. 1:06:39

    Thank you.

35. 1:06:40

    Thank you.

36. 1:06:42

    Okay. I don't see any other questions. Do, do we, we don't have any signups for this particular bill, do we? Okay. We have a motion from the committee of do pass. Is there a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Passes unanimously.

37. 1:06:58

    Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

38. 1:06:59

    I know you need to get to your other meeting. Okay.

39. 1:07:07

    House Bill 438. Where is Clint?

40. 1:07:10

    Behind the pole right here.

41. 1:07:12

    I can't heck see you behind that pole.

42. 1:07:17

    Okay. This is another bill that's been around for a while, has it not?

43. 1:07:20

    Yes, sir. Three terms also for this one. So, um, third time is the charm for Chair Lady Taylor and I both, hopefully. Um, so House Bill 438, um, working off LC56-0281, and very simply, uh, what this does is, um, it would change, uh, as you'll see on line 19 where it says, uh, "In service with the Uniformed Division of the Department of Public Safety," it marks out Uniformed Division of, and it goes on to read, "Department of Public Safety as a sworn law enforcement officer, non-commissioned officer, or trooper." So the, the issue has been that the officers in the Motor Carrier Compliance Division, also known as the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division of the, uh, Department of Public Safety, and the Capitol Police Division, uh, have not had the same retirement benefits, being able to retire with full benefits at 55, nor have they had the same line of duty disability benefits.

44. 1:08:19

    And, um, you know, if the, this session at least on the south anteroom side, if you notice, the, the gentleman who's usually there kind of guarding us and working that area with the dark blue shirt on, that's a comm- commercial vehicle enforcement officer. And so if you have him and a trooper who's on the other end of the ropes down there, if both of them got injured, uh, in the line of duty, one would have much different line of duty disability benefits than the other. And, uh, it's really just a parity bill to, uh, try to get all of the sworn officers in the Department of Public Safety the same benefits, uh, as well, and it, you know, it includes the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, uh, DNR game wardens, uh, and it just puts them all on par.

45. 1:09:03

    And I'm happy to answer any questions. There is a, uh, an actuarial study. Uh, I'm assuming you have copies of it in there, but, um-

46. 1:09:10

    The, the committee was, uh, handed copies, yes.

47. 1:09:12

    Yeah, so if you look, it's, uh, you know, the total dollar amount and increase in annual employer contribution necessary to maintain the retirement system in an actuarially sound condition is $661,000 per year. Uh, not an insignificant amount of money. If somebody offered me $661,000, I would be quite happy. But in the terms of our budget, it's 17 ten-thousandths of 1% of, of our overall budget, so, uh, something I think that, that we can afford to do, and quite frankly, we can't afford not to do.

48. 1:09:44

    So happy to answer any questions, Mr. Chairman.

49. 1:09:46

    Very good. Uh, um, I'll ask a question. Uh, Chairman Co- ... Uh, going back a little bit, this relates to, this go- this issue goes back to where Motor Carrier Compliance was under DOT. Can you speak to that for a moment?

50. 1:10:00

    Uh, yes.

51. 1:10:00

    And, and pull the microphone, yeah, a little bit closer to you.

52. 1:10:05

    Yeah. Yes, sir, it does. And we have some, uh, some members here, of course, the colonel's here, and, and several other members. Um, the, uh, major of, uh, the Motor Carrier Compliance or Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division unfortunately, uh, is out of town, but we've got his, uh, his number two back there. He's hiding behind the pole as well, where you can't see him. But, uh, yes, sir, that's correct. And that, and it, quite frankly, I think was an oversight. Most people I've talked to thought that this was already the case, uh, and I did as well. I thought it certainly must have just been an oversight. But, uh, we've been trying to correct it.

53. 1:10:36

    And as with, uh, a lot of things that involve retirement bills, there are sometimes, uh, there's a cost associated with it. And, uh, but I think all of the questions that we've had up until now and some of the hurdles we've had, I think we've got those cleared up, and we've got consensus among the, the folks now to be able to get this through this time.

54. 1:10:54

    Very good. Any questions from the committee? This has been a, a ongoing issue for a number of years.

55. 1:11:03

    Is there a motion from the committee?

56. 1:11:07

    Move to pass. Move to pass.

57. 1:11:08

    Second.

58. 1:11:09

    And a second from, g- we got two seconds. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Very good. Congratulations, sir.

59. 1:11:21

    Thank you, sir.

60. 1:11:22

    Thank you.

61. 1:11:22

    Thank you, members of the committee.

62. 1:11:24

    Um, make sure you get me a, a, a rules form.

63. 1:11:27

    I will bring it to you first thing in the morning.

64. 1:11:29

    That'll, that'll work.

65. 1:11:30

    All right. Thank you.

66. 1:11:31

    Okay.

67. 1:11:35

    Okay. House Bill 905, Representative Richardson.

68. 1:11:47

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is, uh, HB 905 LC56-0425S. Um, presently, Georgia law prevents some members of the Georgia Judicial Retirement System from purchasing-

69. 1:12:01

    Representative, just make sure you're talking to that microphone.

70. 1:12:03

    Yes.

71. 1:12:03

    We're, we're streaming as well.

72. 1:12:05

    Yes. Oh, okay, okay. Uh, from purchasing, uh, time they previously earned while participating in the Georgia Re- uh, Employees Retirement System. Juvenile judge in particular are not afforded this opportunity. Other classes of members have also been denied this opportunity due to the system's interpretation of several code sections governing the purchase of former time of service. This law would overcome this problem and help both juvenile judges and other members access either funds held in, in own account in the ERS or allow them to fund through purchase of prior ERS time.

73. 1:12:42

    So this is, um, where people have moved from one, uh, one body and then going to the judicial, and they have 90 days to transfer, and several folks have reached out that they haven't, uh, they didn't meet that, that, uh, guideline. So what this bill does is it opens it up, and it gives them, uh, time to December 31st of this year to do that. Um, and then it'll, it'll close up at that time.

74. 1:13:15

    So this would be, uh, you and I have talked about this over the summer or the fall, I can't remember. Yes, sir. But this is in regard to members that are, um, they, they probably have credible service in both ERS and JRS- That's right ... and they want to move it to JRS. Yes, sir. But it would be a non- um, and I'm looking at Mr. Potvin. This would be a non-revocable election, is that correct?

75. 1:13:37

    That is correct.

76. 1:13:37

    Okay. Any questions from the committee?

77. 1:13:44

    Not very vocal committee. Do I hear a motion?

78. 1:13:48

    Move to pass.

79. 1:13:50

    We got a do pass. Is there a second?

80. 1:13:53

    Second.

81. 1:13:53

    Get a second from Representative Buckner. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye.

82. 1:13:58

    Aye.

83. 1:14:00

    Any opposed? Congratulations, sir. Make sure you get me your rules form. Yep. Things are moving pretty- In the morning ... quickly this time of year. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. All right. We're gonna start the joint committee meeting here in about three or four minutes. It, we'll just be at ease for a few minutes.

84. 1:22:46

    Everybody have this? I think so. Okay.

85. 1:22:53

    Go ahead and pass out the ERS. All right. Okay, folks, we're gonna get started with the, uh, with the joint meeting. I, the, I think we might have a, a, several senators that might join us and a few more house reps. I'm gonna ask, uh, Mr. Potvin to come on up, uh, in regard to ERS and its, uh, overview on the plan.

86. 1:23:18

    Jim, thank you for being here.

87. 1:23:25

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

88. 1:23:26

    Yes.

89. 1:23:32

    Um, so I believe you just, you, uh, asked me to start with a bit of a general financial overview, and then maybe get into some of the more specific-

90. 1:23:39

    That's right. We are, just an overall update on the ERS, like we, well, you and I talked about and, and, um, Miss Moody as well. An overall of, of the plan. It looks like you've, you've, you've got that here, as well as how we're, we're, we're closing the gap on various things.

91. 1:23:54

    That's correct. Thank you.

92. 1:24:01

    The ERS plan is made up of, uh, three tiers, as I'm sure you all know at this point. We, one, we used to call the old plan pre-1982. I call it tier one now. The new plan from 1982 to 2008, I call that tier two now. And then the GSEPS tier, which has been in place since, uh, January of 2009. I'm gonna be speaking primarily about the pension portion of the GSEPS, uh, tier and, and, uh, the new plan as well. Most common, when people ask me, "How are we doing?" The most common metric that we use is called funded ratio.

93. 1:24:37

    It's the ratio of, uh, assets to the actuarial liabilities of the system. 100% funded ratio means that you have an amount of assets that is equal to what you project the liabilities to be over time. As of our most recent actuarial valuation, which is the June 30, 2024 valuation, uh, we had a funded ratio of 79, 75.9%. That was up from 72% the year before, and I'll get into some of the details behind that in a moment. Our next actuarial valuation, the June 2025 valuation, is expected to be received and approved by the board in April of this year.

94. 1:25:15

    Um, I've seen some preliminary projections for that, um, and we expect that the, the funded ratio for that valuation would be about 82, maybe 83%, somewhere in that neighborhood. Um, this marks an important milestone for us, exceeding the 80%, and again, I'll get into that, the reasons why, um, in a little while. Um, but we have made a concerted effort to get to that point over the past few years, and it looks like that's going to bear fruit as early as this year.

95. 1:25:41

    I, I, I just, thank you for that. I just don't wanna skip over that, but that's a, I know we're below 100%, but that's a significant jump for the amount of assets and, and future liabilities that you're talking about. Usually these things move one to three percentage points maybe. You're talking about moving from 75 to 82?

96. 1:25:59

    That's correct. So about a 6 to 7% jump in one year, which is the largest increase that I can find for any year going back at least 30 or 40 years in our history. So-

97. 1:26:09

    Okay

98. 1:26:09

    ... it is an extraordinary-

99. 1:26:10

    I'll stop, I'll stop interrupt.

100. 1:26:11

     It is an extraordinary, uh, result for one year, yes. Um, the employer contribution rates, um, they're relatively high compared to our history, but they have been stable for the past five years. Um, and we expect that trend to con- continue going forward as well. Total number of active members were at about 58,000 or so at this point. That is up from 52,500 about three years ago. Um, it can be said, I think with some certainty, that the, uh, initiatives that have been, um, implemented statewide, things like pay increases, some increases to the retirement, other things, um, have had a positive impact on our ability to recruit and retain, at least in some areas.

101. 1:26:54

     I know that there are some areas that still have gaps, um, but we are painting with a broad brush seeing some clear signs of improvement in that area as well. Total number of retirees that have we, that we have in ERS is about 56,000. All but about 1,500 or so of those are from prior to the GSEPS tier, so we're talking about tier one and tier two.

102. 1:27:22

     You said you had f- there's 58,000 participants still contributing to the plan and 56,000-

103. 1:27:31

     Retirees

104. 1:27:31

     ... beneficiaries, as rough numbers, right?

105. 1:27:34

     That's correct.

106. 1:27:34

     Okay, go ahead.

107. 1:27:35

     Yep. Uh, moving to the next page, um, some of the key assumptions that we make in order to do an actuarial valuation to calculate liabilities involve things like a rate of return, an investment rate of return assumption, which is currently 7% for us. That is down from 7.5%, um, about 10 years ago. Um, if we have an unfunded liability as we do today, we amortize that over a 20-year period with a defined end date. Um, that's the-- that's what closed amortization means.

108. 1:28:07

     Amortization method level dollar means that, um, we have... It, it's essentially a level payment, much like a car payment or a mortgage. Rather than em-- relying on increasing payroll, uh, active member payroll, we rely on just a single steady stream of, of payments coming back. That allows us to receive dollars into the fund a little bit more aggressively to pay down that, that unfunded liability. I mentioned that our goal rate for investment returns is seven percent. Um, in FY25, we actually returned twelve percent.

109. 1:28:39

     That was our third consecutive year of double-digit returns. So we're on a, we're on a good streak right now. And this-- so far this year, we're hovering in the ten and a half to eleven and a half percent range right now. Uh, so things have gone pretty well on the investment side as well. Every five years, we conduct what we call an experience study. That's an evaluation of the assumptions that we made five years ago versus the experience of what's actually happened in the intervening time. If there are significant discrepancies between our assumptions and actual experience, we make adjustments to those assumptions going forward.

110. 1:29:14

     Um, key areas that we look at are things like mortality. You know, generally speaking, the long-term trend is improving mortality, longer lifespans over time. Um, that's a cost to the system that we have to factor in and make sure that we're prepared to handle, um, when we're having to pay people for a, a longer period of time. In previous experience studies, there has typically been a multi-hundred million dollar, um, sort of extra liability that we identify through those studies. I'm pleased to report that this time around, um, the study produced a virtually neutral, um, result.

111. 1:29:48

     In other words, we did not add any liability to the system as a result of this study. There were different areas. Some of them were a little bit over, some of them were a little bit other but-- under, but for the most part, they cancel each other out. So happy to, to, to make that, uh...

112. 1:30:09

     One other item to note in the experience study, um, in 2022, for the first time, we established the, the beginning of pre-funding of a cost of living adjustment for the first time in our history. Um, the amount of funding that received at that time enabled us to create a formula that allows for an average one point zero five percent COLA per year. Um, because our funding position today is better than it was when we first established the, the COLA, uh, and because the formula, in part, reacts to the funding position of the system, um, the average expected COLA payment with no changes to the fu- to the formula actually improved slightly from one point zero five percent to one point one five percent.

113. 1:30:48

     It's a small step, but it is a step in the right direction. And as our, our funding continues to improve, that will continue to increase slightly as well.

114. 1:30:59

     On the next page, I have a little chart that shows our funded ratio from the years 2018 to 2024. Those are fiscal year ends. Those are the valuation numbers for each of those years, basically during the current administration. Um, again, most common metric that we use, but if you look at just the, the chart as it show-- as it is there, the s- funded ratio has stayed in a pretty narrow band between about seventy-two and seventy-six percent, uh, over that period of time. Doesn't look like a lot's going on there, but I would tell you that, um, just looking at the funding ratio doesn't tell the whole story.

115. 1:31:35

     There's a lot going on underneath that. What are those? Well, go down to the next slide. Um, we've made a significant number of improvements to the underlying actuarial assumptions, uh, over the course of that seven or eight-year period. We've reduced our rate of return assumption from seven point three percent to seven point zero percent. That same assumption doubles as our discount rate for future cash flows. So again, as you, as you lower that number, the higher your liabilities tend to be. Um, but we felt that was a necessary step in order to make sure that we were funding on a conservative, fiscally responsible basis.

116. 1:32:12

     Our amortization period for paying back unfunded liability, we've reduced from twenty-five to twenty years. Again, a little bit more aggressive posture in terms of getting money back into the system. Um, I've, uh, talked about this a second ago with the experience studies, but we've had two during that time period. In the first one, the mortality rate improvements cost the system about four hundred and fifty million dollars. It's a bill we're happy to pay, of course, but the point is that we had that in a part of the story of the flat funded ratio. And as I mentioned, COLA pre-funding also began during that time.

117. 1:32:43

     So a lot was going on underneath the surface, um, to produce those relatively stable looking funded ratios during that period of time.

118. 1:32:56

     Another thing that, that I wanna talk about that, you know, it seems self-evident, right? We ask for a contribution rate, the state pays that contribution rate to, to fund the system. Um, but as I've noted on a number of occasions, that's-- that-- the level of, of commitment that the state of Georgia has shown toward paying its actuarial bills with respect to ERS, um, and other systems, um, is something to be remarked upon. We receive at least one hundred percent, and in recent years, we've gotten significantly more than one hundred percent of our actuarially determined contribution every single year.

119. 1:33:32

     So in years where we've had to raise the contribution rate, that bill has been paid. Um, in years recently where the contribution rate has been stable, a little extra money comes in, um, and we get an, an extra contribution. Uh, so I'm very grateful and, and appreciative of that support. And again, I don't wanna take it for granted. Um, we did specifically increase the ADEC by about five percentage points to begin that COLA pre-funding that I mentioned earlier. Um, you know The equivalent of about $150 million a year extra that was added to our ADEC for the sole purpose of funding, uh, these COLA payments.

120. 1:34:08

     The two extraordinary $500 million contributions, um, that were designed to improve the funded ratio to get us to that 80% mark. Um, and I should also mention that there have been, if we count FY27, it's in the base budget, I understand, there have been five, uh, appropriations within the last five years to provide a total of about $144 million to us to provide one-time checks directly to retirees. So this will become the f- in FY27, the fifth straight year that we will have provided some form of, of one-time payment to retirees.

121. 1:34:43

     I alluded to this before, uh, but it's worth noting our investment experience year by year during this seven-year period has been, uh, quite good. It's been a nice tailwind for us as we look to improve our funding position. Um, we only have one year, um, of below zero returns, and four out of the last five have been significantly above our target rate of return of that 7% that I mentioned before. The average for the seven-year period is approaching 10%, which is, that's quite extraordinary.

122. 1:35:17

     So what does that mean for the next few years? That's what the next chart and the next graph shows. Um, the circle is where we are today. That's the end of the prior slide where I showed what we've been doing the last seven years. The next five years, um, it looks like we're in good position to, to dramatically improve our funded ratio each year for up to the next four or five years.

123. 1:35:39

     You're on, you're on this chart for projected funding ratio 2018 to 2029.

124. 1:35:45

     That's correct.

125. 1:35:45

     Those are fiscal years, right, Jim?

126. 1:35:46

     They are fiscal years.

127. 1:35:47

     Okay. And a lot of that is led by two things, the $500 million cash injections in 20... well, the prior two years, and the investment returns of being above what was expected. Correct?

128. 1:35:58

     Those are the two biggest items, that's correct.

129. 1:36:00

     Okay. I'm sorry, go ahead.

130. 1:36:03

     Um, now, I always... I should give a word of caution. We- this- if, if returns hold for this year, this will be our fourth straight double-digit year. That will not go on forever. We will have a market correction or multiple market corrections. That's what history says. That is inevitable. So I don't think that things are actually gonna play out exactly like these projections show today. Um, but I think they do emphasize the fact that we are pretty well positioned right now to weather a correction in the markets and still be on a solid funding, uh, trajectory.

131. 1:36:43

     All right, so to get into the issue of the day a little bit more specifically, I've mentioned COLAs a couple times already. We established a formula for paying COLAs in 2022.

132. 1:36:53

     Mm-hmm.

133. 1:36:54

     As has been noted, um, COLAs, the flat COLAs, um, stopped being paid in 2008 was the last year. Um, we went a number of years where we paid no COLA of any kind. Starting in 2017, um, we started paying one-time payments. Um, they increased over time from $900 per person per year up to about $1,800 per person per year. So we were on a upward trajectory there, and then finally in 2022, we started getting actual funding for, for a true COLA, and we started being able to pay small COLAs from that point, uh, going forward.

134. 1:37:29

     The, uh, the actuarial contribution was increased by $150 million, um, beginning in that 2022 year. Um, and as I mentioned, sufficient to average, uh, to fund an average of 1.05% COLA, today 1.15%. Um, the two $500 million contributions were designed to increase the funded ratio to get us to that 80% mark. Together, they account directly for about four and a half percentage points of improvement in our funded ratio. So that's enough to get us from 77, 78% up to that 82, 83 that I expect to see in the next actuarial evaluation.

135. 1:38:08

     All right, moving past the slide deck, there's a table, looks like this, the first page past the slide deck.

136. 1:38:16

     I don't know if I have that. Uh, uh, uh-

137. 1:38:19

     This right here.

138. 1:38:20

     Thank you. Okay.

139. 1:38:20

     I think it was part of the-

140. 1:38:20

     I'm sorry. Go ahead

141. 1:38:21

     ... packet. Um, I wanna highlight this quickly before we move on. Um, I've heard it said multiple times today that ERS hasn't done anything for its retirees in 18 years. Um, not only is that factually false, but there's an implication there, um, that we are not attentive to, we are not responsive to, and we are basically ignoring what is clearly a problem of not being able to pay COLAs to our retirees. We are, in fact, well aware of that problem.

142. 1:38:53

     We have been taking active steps to address that problem. Um, those steps have been incremental. They are not what I would call the final solution to those. Um, but if you look at the table beginning on FY 2017, I believe you can see a pretty steady progression over time from smaller one-time payments, um, to larger one-time payments, to finally beginning true COLAs in conjunction with one-time payments, and the most recent of those one-time payments has been, uh, the largest, um, in the last four years.

143. 1:39:26

     So, um, the board, the appropriations, uh, bodies within the general assembly, the governor's office of planning budget have all worked extraordinarily hard to get us to this point. Um, we are not, again, I will say it again, we are not at the final point, but we are at a, a point that allows us to continue to take steps in the direction that we wanna take. And I'm gonna describe how that COLA formula actually works for you so that you understand the levers that we're pulling and that we're relying on to help us determine what is responsible to pay, uh, as a COLA.

144. 1:40:00

     And, uh, that's from this, uh, COLA calculations example-

145. 1:40:04

     That's correct

146. 1:40:04

     ... handout, right?

147. 1:40:05

     That is correct.

148. 1:40:06

     Okay. Does everybody in the committee have this?

149. 1:40:10

     COLA calculations example.

150. 1:40:11

     Pass, pass the chart.

151. 1:40:15

     Okay. Go ahead, Jim.

152. 1:40:17

     All right, so a brief description of how the, a plan works. One of the challenges, it's, it's a double-edged sword. One of the challenges of managing the finances of a large pension system is that once a benefit is in the system, it cannot be, um, changed. So if we have for, for current employees, right? So if I'm in the GSEP's tier, that, the pension benefit for GSEP's members cannot be reduced, um, uh, for, for me.

153. 1:40:47

     It can only be reduced for those who are hired after that change is made. That's why we have three tiers in the ERS plan at this time. Um, however, statute expressly gave, back in 1968, expressly gave the ERS and TRS boards discretion over payment of COLAs, and we had to rely upon, in part, the actuarial soundness of the system in order to do that. Um, so what I wanted to do with this, um, method of, of calculating COLAs was be able to allow the board to manage the finances of the system and not be locked into a certain payment that could, at some point, get us into some amount of difficulty.

154. 1:41:26

     The reason that the GSEP's tier exists today is because somebody, some powerful somebodies, wanted to get rid of DB plans altogether back in the 2007, 2008 time period. Um, they were unsuccessful with that, um, and the GSEP's tier is the compromise that arose from that. Um, but I wanna make sure that we don't put ourselves in a position where somebody comes to us and says, "Well, we think that the best solution to all of this is to just get out of the defined benefit plan business." I think that would be a terrible mistake overall.

155. 1:41:59

     So the board's in place so that it can manage those liabilities going forward, and we have the opportunity to do that with COLAs. And we're gonna do that based on three key variables. One is recent investment experience, and by recent, I'm basically talking about the last five years', uh, average investment experience. Um, we're talking about the plan's funded position as represented by the funding ratio, and we're talking about the actual rate of inflation as, uh, shown by the, uh, Social Security COLA that's paid at January 1st of each year.

156. 1:42:34

     That's the proxy that we use for that. The specific parameters of the co- of the formula are based on the amount of funding that we have available. This is not, in my opinion, in my view, the final version of this formula. As funding continues to become available, I would like to change the parameters so that it, it produces bigger and better results each year. But for now, this is what we can afford.

157. 1:42:59

     So th- those-

158. 1:43:00

     What's up?

159. 1:43:00

     ... um, those three items are recent investment experience or r- recent investment returns. Uh, second is the fund's overall, uh, position.

160. 1:43:11

     The funding ratio. Mm-hmm.

161. 1:43:12

     Funding ratio, and then third, inflation, which we obviously can't control.

162. 1:43:16

     Correct.

163. 1:43:16

     Okay.

164. 1:43:17

     All right. So how does this actually work? If you'll, if you'll, uh, indulge me, I'll, I'll walk you through a couple of examples to show you how we actually do this. So on the second page of these examples, example 1A, this is how we calculated the COLA that we actually paid in July 1st of 2005. The investment rate of return that we're looking to exceed, what we call the hurdle rate in the formula, is 6%. That's a flat number. It's a number that we have chosen, and the board could theoretically move that around over time as, as we are capable of doing that.

165. 1:43:54

     The five-year rate of return, or what we call the actuarial rate of return, um, was 8.45%, which is actually a pretty good number. Again, our target for the whole system is 7%, so, um, 8.45 is pretty good for a five-year period. Funding ratio for this year was 75.9%. Um, that means... Uh, I kinda skipped over this, I'm sorry. Go back to page one. There's a table that shows

166. 1:44:23

     the relative amount of, um, the, the, uh,

167. 1:44:31

     the excess over the hurdle rate, the excess investment return. The relative amount of that that can be shared changes depending on the funded ratio of the system. So if we're below 70% funded, my recommendation to the board is we can't afford to pay a COLA right now, but when we're in the 70s, we can pay a COLA equal to 25% of that difference, what we call the shareable amount. Okay, so going back to our example, if the actuarial rate of return is 8.45% and the hurdle rate is 6%, we have a, an amount that is in excess of our hurdle rate of 2.45%.

168. 1:45:10

     Based on our funding ratio, we can share 25% of that, which works out to 0.61% and rounds to, uh, one half of 1%.

169. 1:45:24

     I'll pause a minute to let that sink in.

170. 1:45:39

     Let's go to example 2A, and I'll show you what I think is gonna happen this year. The hurdle rate's still 6%. Our actuarial rate of return has actually increased. We're up to 9.9%, or almost 10%. And I think our funded ratio is gonna be at least 82%. So we've moved up a tier in the amount that we can actually share based on our funded ratio, from 25% of the excess to 50% of the excess. What is that excess? It's 9.9% minus our investment target of 6%.

171. 1:46:13

     That gives us 3.9%. Half of that is 1.95, that rounds up to 2.0%. That's the amount that I project the COLA to be for this July. I should point out that that 2% is lower than the Social Security, uh, COLA this year of 2.8%, so therefore it fits underneath that without any further adjustment.

172. 1:46:42

     And that's it. Over time, our funding position in the system's gonna get better. Um, the formula will naturally produce better results because we'll move our way up that funding chart. Um, I hope to be able to make actual amendments to the formula to maybe lower the hurdle rate or make other changes to the system that, that allow for the calculation to become greater. Um, someday maybe we can target a 3% COLA. Um, we know that the funding gap between here and there is pretty daunting. Um, I think if we focus on taking steps when we can take them, we will get there.

173. 1:47:17

     Can I answer any questions?

174. 1:47:19

     Yep, very good. Uh, number 21, Vice Chairman Franklin.

175. 1:47:24

     Yes, this is a lot to take in .

176. 1:47:26

     I know it is.

177. 1:47:26

     But I appreciate you, uh, you sharing it. Um, I have a couple of questions. One, the first one, I, I guess, I mean, so where, where... Oh, your, your funding, uh, ratio, the s- the scale that you have here, um, looks like example two w- that's what we're, you're projecting for this coming year, correct?

178. 1:47:43

     Correct, yes.

179. 1:47:45

     But do you see that c- continuing to, to escalate up? And if so... Or, or to regressing? Or, and if so, if it does escalate up, how long will it take to go to the next tier? Because we're, we're, at this one, we're at, uh, what, um, 82, but your next tier level is at 90, basically, right?

180. 1:48:01

     Correct.

181. 1:48:01

     So that's a big jump. It-

182. 1:48:03

     It is

183. 1:48:03

     ... uh, uh, you wouldn't foresee that happening any time sooner?

184. 1:48:07

     Well, it depends on who you believe. If you believe my chart, my, my graph, the projection, it's gonna happen in the next probably two to three years. Um, if we have a correction, then all bets are off as far as that's concerned. I'm not sure. Um-

185. 1:48:22

     Well, that's encouraging. Um.

186. 1:48:25

     Yeah, I don't wanna make it sound like I'm promising that, but we are on a trajectory right now that suggests that, that we will get there sooner rather than later.

187. 1:48:33

     Okay, my second question I have is totally, it's a little bit separate from this, but it goes back to your chart that you have here. And I'm just curious, how, how did you come up with, um... How are you calculating, rather, the investment, your investment returns? You're at 12% this year, correct?

188. 1:48:48

     12% for FY25, yeah.

189. 1:48:51

     Okay, and you're projecting that to going down to 10, is that right, next year?

190. 1:48:55

     No, our FY26 year-to-date number is currently in the 10 to 11% range.

191. 1:49:01

     Okay. Do you-

192. 1:49:03

     It could end up anywhere from here, but so far this year we've earned 10%.

193. 1:49:07

     Oh, I see what you're saying, right here. And you don't have any projections for '27. You can't do that.

194. 1:49:11

     I won't do that. There's no point in me doing that.

195. 1:49:14

     I gotcha. Okay, thank you.

196. 1:49:19

     Number 23. Is that, uh, M-

197. 1:49:21

     Mitchell

198. 1:49:22

     ... Representative Horner.

199. 1:49:23

     Thank you, Chairman. Yeah, too, too much. Um, perfect. Well, I came in a little late, so I'm, I'm trying not to add in any more questions than I can, but I have a couple questions for you. What is the average payment per month for an average member under this plan?

200. 1:49:38

     About $2,200.

201. 1:49:40

     Okay. And so from even our best case scenario, that's 2.8%, those, their, their $2,200 a month will go up to maybe 2,300. Um, under that plan, is there he- is there SHBP covered under that plan? Or is that just their monthly payment?

202. 1:49:58

     SHBP is a completely separate entity.

203. 1:50:01

     And we-

204. 1:50:01

     We do take deductions from that, but the gross pension amount is, is the 2,200 that I mentioned before.

205. 1:50:08

     And, um, uh, I couldn't find this i- in public record, how many state troopers are under this plan?

206. 1:50:15

     I don't know exactly, um, and it depends on how you're defining state troopers, but somewhere plus or minus 1,000.

207. 1:50:22

     Okay.

208. 1:50:22

     That might be positions and not actual troopers, I'm not sure.

209. 1:50:25

     Do we kn- Um, and again, just because I couldn't find the data, so that's why I'm asking these questions for you. What is the... Because they s- those that are disabled or those hurt on the job serve a less amount of time under, um, under this plan, so they receive less benefit under this plan. Um, that being stated, how... Do, do you know the average payment per trooper per month of, say, if you were disabled or hurt on the job?

210. 1:50:50

     I'm afraid I do not at this time.

211. 1:50:52

     Okay.

212. 1:50:52

     I would have to look that up.

213. 1:50:54

     Thank you.

214. 1:50:59

     Okay, other questions from the committee? Now, I don't know who number 17 is. Is that, is that, uh-

215. 1:51:05

     I'm 17.

216. 1:51:05

     Senator Orrock. Is that right? Okay.

217. 1:51:08

     Thank you very much. Uh, it's been a long day .

218. 1:51:12

     Yes, it has.

219. 1:51:12

     It's not over yet. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. I, I, I, uh, am, am extremely curious about how this approach compares to other states that have maintained cost of living, uh, uh-

220. 1:51:30

     COLAs

221. 1:51:31

     ... yeah, CO- COLAs for their state retirees. A- a- and, and I know I've gotten different answers at different times, different years, maybe slightly different questions, but I would, I would think that we would, uh, a- as a legislature, would want to look at, uh, and understand what other states are doing, because I, I, I'm in touch with people across the country that are serving in legislatures like ours, and this, uh, uh, to, to my knowledge, and, and I don't, I, I certainly don't pretend to know everything, but, uh, I, uh, colleagues that I s- uh, uh, am in touch with across s- the country, I'm not hearing a hubbub from their state retirees about- Losing a COLA.

222. 1:52:17

     So I, I think it really behooves, uh, both the House and the Senate committees on, on retirement to educate ourselves, uh, be- beyond the walls, beyond these four walls about how we compare with other states in performance in adhering to, uh, hon- honoring the, the, the COLA. Think of what, uh, for our grandparents, uh, what a, what a COLA, uh... If Social Security quit paying COLAs. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the checks that people get have been shrinking, shrinking, shrinking as a result because, uh, the cost of living is not being built in to the base.

223. 1:52:58

     And so I, I, I really think we should, uh, in addition to trying to understand this hurdle rate and, you know, what we've just been walked through, and it's not the first time that, uh, that Jim and I have talked about this. It's, and, and, and I've been walked through it before. But, uh, does that seem like a reasonable, uh, approach? And I, I don't know what, uh, uh, Mr. Potvin, what information he has. He says one or other two s- two, two, or two or three states, or one to one, between one and three states are doing this kind of approach.

224. 1:53:33

     Is that what you told me?

225. 1:53:35

     I don't know the exact number. It's not a large number that are doing a variable COLA similar to this. Um, and with any of these questions, there's a gamut. So I would suggest that two of the very best funded systems in the country are Wisconsin Retirement System and South Dakota's Retirement System. Both of them have a variable COLA, depending on where their funding position is. And in Wisconsin's case, um, they provide... They don't call it a COLA, but whatever they call it, they provide, you know, up to 8 or 9% increases in some years, and up to 4 or 5% decreases in other years.

226. 1:54:13

     Uh, so they have a pretty radical, I think, approach, and that's not one that I would be willing to consider here. Um, but the idea, um, did not originate with us. I understood New Mexico to have something. I, you know, I was working with our actuaries and asked them if there were, there were anybody, and they came back with, "Well, here are some of the, the variables that sometimes systems look at in order to do this." Um, risk-sharing, what, what is called risk-sharing as a concept, which just is, is the idea of variability in the way a pension plan, um, provides benefits depending on certain factors like funding position, like recent investment returns, um, as, is a concept that has become more and more, um, prevalent, I guess, in recent years.

227. 1:55:00

     I would suggest that our hybrid tier is actually an early form of that. Um, in a DB plan, most of the in- all the investment risk is on the state, and in a DC plan, all the investment risk is on the individuals. So there's your risk-sharing in that sense. There are other ways to do that primarily within a defined benefit or a cash balance framework, um, that other states have tried as well. So it, it really runs, uh, a large gamut across. There are some states that have some discretion on COLAs. Many don't.

228. 1:55:30

     Many have them written into their statutes.

229. 1:55:32

     Uh-huh.

230. 1:55:33

     Um, a- and, and that's certainly, uh, a, a choice that, that they made. Now, one sort of handicap that we have now that they don't, if they've written them into their s- their statute, they are pre-funded. They have been funding them all along for that 60-year period that we have not. So we are playing catch-up in a very real sense here. We're trying to pay COLAs at the same time that we're trying to build up so we can pay better COLAs in the future. Um, and having those two goals happening at the same time, it's a, it's a big task.

231. 1:56:06

     Nance, does that answer your question?

232. 1:56:09

     Well, it, uh, it's an answer. I'll, I'll, I- I'd love to r- you know, drill down on that and, and get, get information from NCSL, for example, that, it covers all the states and, uh, does real good da- data gathering. That, that, uh, would, uh, would be a resource to us, I think.

233. 1:56:26

     Okay. Um, Senator McLaurin. Are you number 18? Yeah.

234. 1:56:31

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Also, my apologies for being a little bit tardy today. Um, thank you, uh, Mr. Potvin, for your testimony, and I just kind of want to make a global observation. I didn't really want to make this observation while we were trying to pass Senator Orrock's very good legislation earlier today, 'cause I think the priority at that moment was just to get the legislation passed and then have this more fulsome conversation later. But the global observation I would make is that this conversation between the fund and the retirees and, you know, sort of the legislators who either fall on one side of the more conservative and fiscally, you know, tight side versus the let's keep our promise side, it reminds me a lot of a dispute between people who lean their chairs back on an airplane, their seats, and the people right behind them.

235. 1:57:18

     And, you know, there's a, there's an opportunity to be very fussy in that situation because you think, you know, there should be, it should be a certain way. Either people should be able, it's there for a reason, you can lean it back, or you should never lean your seats back, and then we have complicated mathematical formulas on how far to lean the chair back. But the reality is that the airline built the plane that way. And we, and I think if I can take your comments for what they're worth, and tell me if I'm wrong, we would all love a world where we were funded at a level where we didn't have to nitpick the small percentage points and formulas.

236. 1:57:51

     We would, we would like to just have an abundance mindset about taking care of our people.

237. 1:57:55

     I would love some more legroom. Yes, sir.

238. 1:57:57

     And we would all love some more legroom. Exactly right. And so the elephant in the room here, and if you need to buzz me for talking points in 2026, you know, please feel free.

239. 1:58:05

     Sure.

240. 1:58:05

     But, but the elephant in the room is we're having a tax relief conversation globally across the state. The Senate wants to do income taxes, and the House wants to do property taxes. You know, sober estimates of the Senate income tax proposals that have already passed out of the Senate are that it would have an annual cost of anywhere from $3 to $9 billion. If you combine the home, you know, the, uh, the exemption conversation, 50, 100,000 with the rate cut, then we'd be blowing potentially a $9 billion per year hole in our budget. And that, to use the analogy, is how we're talking about constructing the airplane And how close together are these seats so that when you start leaning back a seat, does it offend your neighbor or not?

241. 1:58:44

     And so, you know, I, one thing that's, I think, a limitation of our committee system at the Capitol is that when we consider a bill or a topic in isolation at a committee, we very often feel like we're not responsible for the rest of the world of conversation that's happening outside of that bill. And I've, I mean, how many times have I made noise in the minority where I said, "You know, there's a problem with this bill," and they'll say, "Well, that's not in the bill, representative or senator, and we'll have to take that up an- at another time." But I don't think you can talk about COLAs for retirees in the state and the unique posture we're in without having a conversation about the fact that the political powers that be this year are telling us that we have more money than we know what to do with at the state government level, and that we gotta give it all back 'cause taxpayers deserve it.

242. 1:59:26

     And I guess my question is, are we willing as a body, Senate and House, Republican and Democrat, to have the courage to connect the dots here and say, "Well, the conversations we're having in Retirement Committee, Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, sound a lot different than the ones we're having on the Senate and House floor, where we're talking about we got more money than we know what to do with"? Uh, so I would just, you know, humbly... I don't know even who, know who I'm dissenting at right now, Mr. Chairman. But I think the, the point I'm trying to make is we need to get our story straight. We either have more money than we know what to do with, in which case this conversation we're having today shouldn't be a problem at all, but so we don't.

243. 2:00:04

     And so then we need to be honest about whether or not we can really defund government the way that is being proposed, either in the Senate or the House, when it comes to income tax and property tax revenues. I just, I would like for us to have an honest conversation that connects the two. And again, it would be fully appropriate for you to respond to me saying, "That's outside the scope of this conversation today," and that's normally how the committee goes. But, um, but I just wanted to flag that because I think, uh, this is, this is a crazy thing I'm about to say. That if we all had honesty about what fiscal health really required, if we could all just work with the same set of facts about how to run government responsibly, I think we would much more naturally get to a solution.

244. 2:00:43

     But I think we're, we're stuck this year in some tax relief campaign politics. So I'm just shaking my fist at the sky, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate-

245. 2:00:48

     I'm hearing you

246. 2:00:49

     ... your indulgence.

247. 2:00:52

     Thank you, sir. Uh, number 26. Chairman Tarvin, is that right?

248. 2:00:58

     My friend from the Senate, uh, I don't know who, who we're talking to a lot of times, but, uh, to say we have more money than we know what to do with, I, in, in doing some of the things I've, we've been doing, I, I don't think we have more money than we know what to do with. We, a- at 14 billion, we've got enough for three months. Now down to 10, we're down to about two. And with one downturn of a, a, a pandemic or a, the economy, we're out of money. So it is the people's money, and I, and I, I appreciate what you're saying. I know that. And this, this is very important to all of us, and, and we all hear about the COLAs.

249. 2:01:32

     But, uh, I wish we'd get away from saying we've got more m- money than we know what to do with, because I, I truly don't think we do. We've been very blessed, and we, we're trying to return some of that to the people. But on, to your point, that we should maybe do that through some of these things we're talking about now. Thank you.

250. 2:01:52

     Thank you. Anything else from the committee? Mr. Potvin, thank you for putting this all together. Um, I, I did have a couple of questions. What is the current, uh, um, I, I, I was, I was, I was thinking AUMs. What is your current ba- asset balance for the ERS?

251. 2:02:10

     About $20 billion.

252. 2:02:11

     About 20 billion.

253. 2:02:11

     20 billion.

254. 2:02:13

     20 billion.

255. 2:02:16

     And how much does that go on?

256. 2:02:18

     You got a question?

257. 2:02:19

     Yeah. Uh, yeah, I'm just saying to follow up, just how much then does, uh, the, uh, are the earnings on that?

258. 2:02:25

     Well, he just covered it with the investment returns.

259. 2:02:27

     Well, it, well, just say-

260. 2:02:29

     Well, 7% of that would be what? 1.4 billion.

261. 2:02:37

     Is there anything else that you would, and the, and the ERS board would, would pref- prefer to see from us, from legislature, in addition to a cash injection, uh, in regard to being able to pursue higher investment returns with, um, within, not, not, not crazy investments or wha- or anything, you know, incredibly risky. Is there anything, any other tools that we can provide to ERS for something like that? I think you and I have talked about that over the years.

262. 2:03:06

     Yeah, we have. Um, I appreciate that question a lot. Um, what I would say to you is the tools that we have, you know, we, was it last year or the year before that we raised our, our ability to invest in alternative investments from 5% of the portfolio to 10% of the portfolio. We haven't taken full advantage of that as of yet. Um-

263. 2:03:26

     Well-

264. 2:03:26

     ... we, we may.

265. 2:03:27

     I, I, that's fair. That happens over time, but, uh, I get it.

266. 2:03:30

     It happens over time. That's right. My point is, though, I don't think, and, and I'm speaking largely for myself, but I don't get a sense that we're feeling constrained at this time by what we can and can't do statutorily from that standpoint.

267. 2:03:43

     Okay. Okay.

268. 2:03:44

     Um, we've had results over the past, you know, this, this upturn. Uh, we've had results that, that are in the top 10% to 15% nationally over the past three or four years. Um, that's a hard result to complain about. So I think we're, we're feeling okay at the moment.

269. 2:03:58

     Got it. Okay. Any other questions for Mr. Potvin?

270. 2:04:04

     I have a question. This is curiosity question.

271. 2:04:06

     As you'd like. Uh, Representative Buckner.

272. 2:04:08

     Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If we've got 20 billion, what number would it have to be where we could comfortably fund the COLAs that everybody wants so desperately, or needs so desperately?

273. 2:04:23

     Well, that answer is in the-

274. 2:04:25

     I know, but tell me-

275. 2:04:26

     ... in the formula

276. 2:04:26

     ... 'cause I'm not sure I see it.

277. 2:04:28

     100% funded would be the ideal situation to be in as the formula stands today. Um-

278. 2:04:38

     That $20 billion is not sufficient to fund the general benefits that are promised by the GSEPS program and the new plan and all of that, plus the level of COLA that we want. So, you know, I think Senate Bill 339 illustrates the cost of getting us from the COLA that we're at today, as illustrated by this formula, and the COLA that we want, which would be, would require changes to this formula that the board could accomplish, um, should that funding become available. So we're $3 to $4 billion away from being what I would call fully funded for purposes of paying the kind of COLAs that we want.

279. 2:05:16

     So the questions that I've been asked are, and, and I don't know anything about what I'm trying to say, so it may not make a bit of sense to me or you or anybody else, but that there's a reserve fund that seems to be extremely full that could be used for some COLAs or one-times that have not been. Does that make sense to you that there is a reserve fund? Is that part of the 20-

280. 2:05:45

     Not within, it's not within ERS.

281. 2:05:47

     Okay. So there's, the, all the money you have is the 20 billion?

282. 2:05:51

     Correct.

283. 2:05:52

     Okay.

284. 2:05:54

     Thank you.

285. 2:05:57

     Um, Nan, just a minute. We had another question. Number 23. Representative Horner.

286. 2:06:03

     Thank you, Chairman. I actually had two quick questions for you. First one is, um, the TRS is under a, is under a lower... I know, I know it's a different program. I'm just simply saying. TRS currently has about 70% unfunded lia- um, 30% un- unfunded liability and 70% funded. But they-

287. 2:06:19

     But they're a little bit higher than that at this point.

288. 2:06:20

     Well, yeah, and this year's a little bit better, so I was just going off last year.

289. 2:06:23

     It's around 10%, isn't it?

290. 2:06:25

     I don't think so. But, um, yeah, my, my point is, they have a built-in 3% requirement every year to go up for their teacher retirement, and their unfunded liabilities is lower than ERS. Um-

291. 2:06:36

     As a percentage, yes. As a dollar amount, it's significantly higher.

292. 2:06:40

     And on that note, um, how much... So of your investment portfolio, usually it's 70% in- inside all the different types of investments, and you hold about 30% cash.

293. 2:06:50

     No.

294. 2:06:51

     Well, what's the investment breakdown?

295. 2:06:54

     We're pretty much, th- we, our stock investments are usually between 68 and 73% of our total portfolio. That includes private equity. Fixed income might be 25 to 27%. There's not usually much cash, 1 to 2%, and only that just for liquidity so we can make our pension payments.

296. 2:07:14

     Gotcha. Okay, thank you.

297. 2:07:17

     I think I would, I would just add that I think the... Can I presume, or maybe I just ask the question, that your investment returns for '25 and expected for fiscal '26 are doing better because fixed income is not as much of a laggard in add- in addition to equity outperforming, uh, market averages. Is that correct?

298. 2:07:40

     That's fair.

299. 2:07:41

     That's fair?

300. 2:07:41

     Yeah, I mean, sectors within that obviously change. International's doing better this year than it's done in prior years, but yes, broadly speaking, what you're saying is true.

301. 2:07:49

     Well, and inflation just has a, such a horrible impact on, uh, fixed income, uh, in- investments and so forth. Um, Senator Orr.

302. 2:07:58

     Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, y- you know, w- we've appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to the, the, uh, retiree system, but when you look at it objectively, less than half of that has actually arrived in payments to retirees. Is that accurate?

303. 2:08:23

     Yes.

304. 2:08:24

     Right. And so it s- it, it, it seems like the, the, the, the message being sent to the retirees is that, um, the t- retirees should bear the burden. A- a- a- a- a- and there's this amorphous fund, and then there are real people with real financial needs, uh, that, uh, that are worsening, and, uh, they're supposed to just, uh, tighten their belts and, and, and, and li- and live through it.

305. 2:08:57

     I feel like I need to-

306. 2:08:58

     And that, that's what I see-

307. 2:08:59

     ... respond

308. 2:08:59

     ... is that, you know, uh, uh, just, just to finish up, I mean, I, I just see that that's, that's the way the weights have been, have been weighted that way, that, that the retirees somehow have to sh- share the risk that m- mean, you know, th- they, the... I've talked to people today that, that, that, uh, have worked 35 and 40 years, uh, as state employees, and over and over I've heard today, I mean, uh, really countless times, that when they signed up, when they took the job, the 3% COLA was part of the deal.

309. 2:09:34

     Heads are shaking. How many had that commitment made? Look, look, look, look here at this room.

310. 2:09:39

     Okay.

311. 2:09:40

     Right, yeah. And, and so-

312. 2:09:40

     That may be what they heard from their local A- that may be what they heard from their local HR, and I don't know the answer to that.

313. 2:09:47

     I-

314. 2:09:47

     But I will say this, the ERS board never pre-funded a COLA. That's a pretty clear signal of intent at that point.

315. 2:09:59

     There's no promise made in a COLA that's not pre-funded. Now, the fact is, for many years, they were able to pay 3% COLAs because the system was smaller, um, financial conditions were what they were. But when things got bad in the 2000s, we hit a point where we couldn't do that anymore. And I gave you the numbers, I won't repeat them here, um, about, um, where I think we would be if, if, uh, we had been continuing to pay COLAs all along. Let's just say dire straits, um, and I don't want to go there.

316. 2:10:30

     I don't want to put us in a position where somebody's gonna say, "We can't afford to be in this business anymore."

317. 2:10:38

     M- um, Mr. Brabrand You believe that the, that we're, that the board, the ERS board is gonna adopt a position where we have a funded rate of about 82%, and that, that might happen in two months, right?

318. 2:10:54

     Correct.

319. 2:10:54

     As of June 30th, 2025.

320. 2:10:57

     Correct.

321. 2:10:58

     And based on, un- unless there's something horrible in the market, which is always possible, you're expecting that rate to go up for 2026.

322. 2:11:08

     Yes.

323. 2:11:08

     That would be approved in April '27, correct?

324. 2:11:10

     Yes.

325. 2:11:11

     To, uh, Senator Orrock's point, uh, in regard to comparison, and I, I think what Nana's talking about is benchmarking. How does our funded percentage for our state employees defined benefit plan ERS, how does that compare to other states? I, I like to compare it to North Carolina a lot, but-

326. 2:11:27

     Yeah, that's a good-

327. 2:11:28

     How, how do, how do other states across the southeast in comparable sizes, how, how do they compare? How do we compare to them?

328. 2:11:36

     We're similar to the median. Um, the median changes from year to year. It's currently in the upper 70s.

329. 2:11:41

     Understood.

330. 2:11:41

     We're slightly below that, and we're gonna be slightly above whatever the number is next year, I believe. But we're close to the state median. Again, to compare us directly to North Carolina or Virginia or Tennessee or whoever is dangerous in that there's more beneath the hood, so to speak, how that number gets created. So if you just remember that, then you can take me at face value and say, "Yes, we're pretty much in the middle of the pack."

331. 2:12:07

     Okay. Any other questions from the committee? We have some more speakers, and I know we have a lot of people who've driven a long way to, to be here.

332. 2:12:16

     I know.

333. 2:12:18

     It's been a long day, and we're gonna hear them out, as long as it takes. Mr. Vaiden, thank you very much. And, uh, I trust you're gonna stick around for a bit, right?

334. 2:12:26

     I will.

335. 2:12:26

     All right.

336. 2:12:27

     Thank you to everybody on the committee. I appreciate your time.

337. 2:12:29

     Thank you.

338. 2:12:29

     Thank you.

339. 2:12:31

     Um, we have a number of speakers that have signed up. Uh, if, if you wanna speak, I know that it's 5:15, but we're gonna listen to everybody here that's, that's signed up. Um, and I'm just gonna go in order. Uh, Eddie Henderson. And on deck, I like baseball, on deck is Sammy Young. Uh, if you wanna go to the, to the, to the podium or the table, either one.

340. 2:12:59

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

341. 2:13:00

     Looks like you got a book there. Go ahead.

342. 2:13:02

     Thank you for the opportunity to address the group. Uh, really appreciate the opportunity, and thank you for the work you've done. Thank you for the Senate Retirement Committee for passing 339 today. I am Eddie Henderson. I worked for DNR for 36 years. My last seven and a half years, I was colonel over the law enforcement division. I've been retired for seven years now. Very, very great job. Thankful for all the opportunities I had with that. And we wanna thank you for what you've done with your continued work to kind of move this ball to get to a point where we got funding that's helping to get the fund where it needs to be, et cetera, et cetera.

343. 2:13:42

     But you gotta think about the law enforcement officers, and we've got regular state employee retirees here. It, this covers everybody that we're talking about. But basically, we're kinda coming from the LE group. The state law enforcement officer retirees over their career significantly contribute to the safety in this state, but also the quality of life that we enjoy here. You know, Georgia is still, what, the number one state to do business in for the last 12 years. You know, that's a, something very important that businesses look for when they're looking at a state. How safe is that state?

344. 2:14:13

     What opportunities do we have there for our employees to be there? And that doesn't matter if it's a game warden, a GBI agent, a trooper, we all contributed to that. And as, uh, director of ERS mentioned, you know, he's heard a lot about 17 years we haven't had COLAs, and what I think we're, you're hearing from that is we haven't had appreciable COLAs during that time. We've got COLAs. Those have been appreciated. Uh, the one-time payments, they have been appreciated, but we're looking at is, just like Senator Orrock said earlier, when we come through the process, I'm telling you, our personnel services give us an employee handbook that said, "When you retire, you can look at having a 3% COLA." And everyone sitting in here probably can tell you, "Yes, we had that.

345. 2:14:58

     It was in my retirement book. Our personnel services told us that." So that's where the employees are coming from with that. You know, we understand when there's a huge economic downturn, where there's things that happen, that, that can cause problems with that, and we appreciate ERS keeping that fund solvent. But, you know, we're now to a time, as you've mentioned, if it is true there's nine billion in undesignated surplus funds, we're asking for those COLAs to be funded, so to speak. We're not asking for the fund to be insolvent, but we're asking for that to move forward.

346. 2:15:34

     And over the years, uh, during my career, all of our agencies had great working relationships together. We collaborated together a lot. And just for example, there's a lot of sacrifices by officers that have been made. I'll talk about the more significant ones real quickly, but every officer that has went through a full career did not come out unscathed at the end for all the death and destruction that they had to see, had to deal with, et cetera. And what they're asking is, let us retire in dignity, have financial security.

347. 2:16:09

     And the w- the loss of these COLAs that everyone anticipated they were to, gonna get has caused a big gap. A lot of these folks probably have a third less purchasing power through that period of time than what they had when, when they retired, and there's a lot of factors with that, too. So during my career just within DNR, we had four officers shot. Most of those were mistaken for game, so to speak. Um, and only by the grace of God, they survived. We had five officer-involved shootings during my 36-year career.

348. 2:16:40

     A lot of times people may not equate that with game wardens, but it, all these law enforcement careers, and we're gonna mention that today- carry that burden of, "I may not come home today." Their families carry that burden, "I may not come home today." So when we were all going through the process, going to get hired, you look at that retirement package, and that was a huge retainer for folks. You'll get a COLA. One point in time when I started, you're gonna get a merited increase. Those went away. It was replaced with pay for performance.

349. 2:17:11

     That was never really funded. But still, we hung in there because we think, "Well, when we retire, we'll be, probably be okay." And part of that also was that we were like in the we're-gonna-pay-you-later group. You're not making much money now. I started in '82, $12,500 a year. I was proud to have that job, proud to be there, 'cause that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to give back. So when we were looking at that, you say, "Well, that's not much salary, but hopefully over time when merited increases, we'll get to the point when we retire, we're gonna be guaranteed a 3% COLA." That's what we heard.

350. 2:17:47

     It may not have been exactly the case, but I would feel like every officer sitting here today will tell you, and every other state employee, that's what we understood. So that's where that's coming from, from the individuals that are here. Real quickly, um, kinda going through, like with in, in DNR, just real quick, Corporal Leon Tucker, Lowndes County, shot by a turkey hunter. Uh, out on foot patrol. Three other officers were on, game wardens were on that same piece of property out on foot, and that's normal, out in the middle of nowhere, no access to a vehicle or anything else.

351. 2:18:25

     He was shot in the inner thigh, femoral artery hit, and I'm telling you, it's by the grace of God that he's here today being able to walk this earth. That was over 22 years ago, so he was in that 17-year window that we keep referring to as employees that has continued to back up, back up, back up. Another officer with us, uh, Curtis Wright, crossing a railroad track. And all these were in full open areas. They weren't concealed or anything else. Got shot with a 7mm-08 in the abdomen.

352. 2:18:55

     He survived that by the grace of God, I'm telling you. Um, that's been over 18 years ago, so he's been in that same window of not getting any increases for his salary to look after himself, his family, or anybody else. So their purchasing power has been decreased greatly. Also have with us, uh, Corporal Daryl Worth. Would you stand up? Corp- Corporal Daryl Worth, working Greene County, walking down a woods road, turkey season. Hunter in concealment shot him.

353. 2:19:27

     By the grace of God, that was not worse than what it was. He was able to finish his career out where these other officers were not. Then the next, uh, with DNR, Sergeant Damon Winters, if you would stand. He's working another job now since he's retired, but he had a heroic waterborne rescue of seven individuals off the Georgia coast. And if he had not been in the position he was at the location he was, there's seven individuals today that would not be here. He did that rescue by himself on the coast, in the ocean, with extremely, uh, hazardous conditions with the way the waves and all get down there.

354. 2:20:06

     And, uh, we're just track, scratching the surface here with that. Also, Agent Bert Davis with GBI, if you would stand. He had two separate incidents during his career, and quickly. He was shot while working an auto theft investigation, an undercover operation, and then years later, he was working with Special Agent in Charge Sonny King, attempted to serve a war- search warrant in a rural area when SAC King and chief deputy of the county were shot.

355. 2:20:40

     Bert advanced the bad guy using a shotgun. He ended the threat that was there. SAC King died at the scene. The offender also died. Um, and the other officers recovered. And then Agent Johnny Cannon. I've worked with him in the field when I was in South Georgia as a baby game warden. He was working with other agents on a SWAT call-out in Lincoln County when he was shot in the head by a barricaded gunman. Other two agents were also shot. Agent Chennefield was shot in the chest.

356. 2:21:11

     SAC Ingram was shot in the upper thigh. The offender was fatally wounded. Uh, Johnny Cannon later retired as SAC of the GBI Cargo Theft Unit. Trooper Young, he was working on New Year's Eve when he was, was, stopped a DUI driver in a remote location. The offender gained control of his flashlight, brutally attacked him, beating him in the head and face area. Badly wounded, Trooper Young wrestled the offender and tried to get, draw his handgun.

357. 2:21:43

     But the offender was able to take that from him. All the blood that was in his face and his eyes, he couldn't see. So he was able to get distance from the offender. The offender shot in his direction, and fortunately, the assailant fled the scene. He was hospitalized, went through several surgeries as he recovered from ex- an extraordinary brutal attack. And I'm just scratching the surface. There's a lot of other officers that are sitting here in the, here today that have been through similar situations. He retired as a lieutenant assistant troop commander with the Georgia State Patrol.

358. 2:22:18

     Since 1911 with DNR, we had 10 officers killed in the line of duty. And I looked this up online, I think it's correct, since GSP was incepted, 31 troopers killed in the line of duty and six GBI agents. So that, to me, that's sig- significant. Every officer that goes out there every day is putting their life on the line. These officers out here today have also done that. So it's something just as a consideration. Some other things just to think about, um- From the law enforcement perspective, Dr.

359. 2:22:53

     Ben Stone with Sigma Technical Wellness recently gave a presentation at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. And due to a lot of the stressors that are associated just with the profession, life expectancy of LE officers is 57 years of age, and that's, this is a recent study. That's compared to se- 79 years of age for the general population, a 22-year gap. Heart attacks are 45% for law enforcement officers under the age of 45, compared to 7% in the general population, and I attribute that to all these stressors that are asso- associated with the job.

360. 2:23:37

     Law enforcement officers in the US face a significantly higher risk of suicide also compared to the general population. Study indicate that roughly 54%, that's 54%, are more likely to die by suicide than a civilian. And listen to this. Data from 2016 to 2022 shows an average of 180 officers annually taking their own life. That usually exceeds the number of officers in the US killed in the line of duty.

361. 2:24:10

     Those are big numbers, and I think a lot of that comes to what's with the job. So with L- LEOs having a shorter life expectancy, most of them have more health-related issues. There's a lot of folks that would've been here today, but we kept hearing, "We can't come. We got health issues that we can't make it." And those are all on these fixed incomes that they've been on for a while. So what we're asking for, again, is just for that financial security for those that have given so much to protect the citizens of our state, and let them retire in dignity, in a location, in a place financially that they can.

362. 2:24:50

     So the request is what was passed with Senate Bill this, and the earlier committee, is get back to that 3% level at least with the COLAs. Again, I'm telling you, everybody here will tell you that when I went through my orientation to get hired, we were told we're gonna get a 3% increase, and it's in an employee handbook. So that's where the employees are coming from when they ha- make those statements. So let's connect those dots. Let's build the ERS airplane so it's got plenty of leg room to be able to do this.

363. 2:25:22

     Let's see if we can get the funding to be able to do this, and w- and we get that. Thank you again for your time.

364. 2:25:31

     Thank you, Mr. Henderson. I had a question over here. D- no? Okay. Uh, number 23, I think that's Mr.- Representative Horner. Thank you, Chairman. I have a question. It might be personal, but I'm not trying to be personal. I'm just trying to- Sure ... ma- make a statement of you're asking us to live off X amount of money. And what I'm asking is, of your members that have been hurt in the line of duty and the ones that stood today, who's willing to, age of, of how long you served the state, and what are we asking to live on monthly? Is, is anybody willing to make that statement?

365. 2:26:01

     I'm sure that some of these here today will be glad to tell you. Because I wanna check, I wanna check this number. Yes, sir. Retired trooper Danny Blevins. Well, we're, we're, uh, if you don't mind, come to this podium right here, b- no reason that ... I, I, I trust, I trust we can all hear you. I trust we can all hear you. It's just that we're, we're streaming this and recording, and so that's why I asked you to speak in the microphone. Just state your name real quick and then the j- uh, the representative's question.

366. 2:26:32

     Retired Georgia state trooper Danny Blevins, North Georgia. I retired in 2011 after being injured in the line of duty. I drove up on a crash. A subject had left a methadone clinic. He had turned his vehicle upside down, down the railroad tracks. I got out, took him into custody, herniated the disc in my lower back. I was forced to retire. Uh, I was short of the time frames in the Georgia State Patrol to get my full retirement. I didn't have the 18.8 or 18.7, whatever you had to have, so I went out with a lesser amount of time.

367. 2:27:05

     I currently draw approximately $3,200 a month, and with my wife and children, we take out health insurance. My approximate salary after I pay my insurance every month is probably around 28, $2,900 a month. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

368. 2:27:27

     Any questions for Mr. Henderson from the committee?

369. 2:27:33

     Okay. Senator McLaurin. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much for your testimony. I wanna go ahead and thank everybody who stood up and everybody who's here today for the courage it takes to put your story out in the open like this, 'cause I know, I mean, I know you're proud of your service. But it takes an extra step to actually show up here and participate in this process, so thank you. Um, I would assume it's not just the money, but it's also about the dignity, and it's about the promise that was made. And if you could speak a little bit to the dignity piece of it and what it means to have the promise kept, I, I would love to hear more from you about that.

370. 2:28:08

     Sure. You know, the opportunities that we had, I think everyone here, no, no matter if it's a law enforcement officer or a regular state employee, so to speak, that's here, we all were committed to the job. And, and being in law enforcement, it is a lifestyle. Mm-hmm. And it's like a whole family is involved in that lifestyle, especially the folks that have been here any amount of time. 'Cause most of the time, you get your calls at home. You just get home. You're taking your b- gun belt off. You get a call. You gotta go back out. Midnight, you get those calls. It's like a constant thing, uh, for that.

371. 2:28:42

     So far as the dignity piece, you know, they, they give their lives to the state, and when they get to the point where they can't make ends meet, uh- Most of them, as we get older, the opportunity to have a second job like we had when we were coming along, not making much money, making ends meet, that's less, less and less. So they need to have that dignity with their families and their communities to be able to get out, enjoy their lives versus worrying about, "How am I gonna make this next payment? Okay, I've got this medication bill over here.

372. 2:29:13

     Now, what are we gonna put together to get that? We gotta take it away from this bill." Those are the things that I personally am talking about when we talk about them having their dignity and their financial security in retirement.

373. 2:29:30

     Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Henderson. Um, and thank you for your service.

374. 2:29:33

     Thank you, sir.

375. 2:29:34

     Absolutely. Uh, Sammy Young, and then after that would be Mr. Burt Davis.

376. 2:29:43

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee. Thank y'all for what you do every day. I can't... Uh, Colonel Henderson there pretty much summed up my remarks on what I went through. I was just gonna put a personal touch on it about getting beat in the head with a heavy impact weapon, which was my flashlight-

377. 2:30:02

     Uh-huh

378. 2:30:02

     ... north of Swainsboro on January the 1st, 1994, and, uh, required 321 stitches. I was med at the hospital in Savannah after being life-flighted down there by Colonel Hitchens, the, the older Colonel Hitchens, who was my captain at the time, and, uh, anyway, so a few surgeries later, uh, my wife didn't recognize me when I got home. Plastic surgeon did it, but I said, "It's me, honey." But I was allowed to go home and see my two-year-old son who had, uh, who, who'd gotten to know me.

379. 2:30:34

     He's now serving in the Coast Guard up in Alaska right now. I don't think he's gonna get paid this week, but, uh, anyway, but it just puts a personal touch to it to... There are many heroes in this room today that you'll see amongst you, and, uh, had several heroes come to me that night, local and state heroes, and, uh, they, they put their life on the line every day. I chose to, after retiring after 31 years and 14 days, I chose to, uh, stay retired two years, went back to work.

380. 2:31:07

     I'm now the chief deputy in Johnson County, Georgia, uh, for a sheriff who was a retired trooper as well. So, uh, I'm still working today. Been there about five years now, and look forward to going to work and helping him every day un- until I get to a point where I say, "I ain't gonna do this no more." Hopefully when, when COLA's in place.

381. 2:31:28

     Right.

382. 2:31:29

     Uh, thank y'all for what you do. I appreciate y'all. Appreciate everything that, that y'all help us with.

383. 2:31:36

     Thank you, sir. Burt Davis, and after Mr. Davis will be Daryl Worth.

384. 2:31:58

     Let me tell you a little bit about how I came to work for the bureau. I never applied. Jimmy Carter was governor, and at the time, he was in the process of trying to split State Patrol and the GBI, and he was laying a foundation for the bureau that we have today.

385. 2:32:20

     Mm-hmm.

386. 2:32:20

     I'd been a deputy sheriff and a police officer my last two years of college, working at night, going to school in the daytime. I got to be good friends with one of the people that he had recruiting people to come with the bureau at a time when outside people were not hired in the bureau. We were still part of the State Patrol, and I was actually hired as a trooper in November of 1971. That's how old I am. Um, I was working with Chattanooga Police Department after I graduated.

387. 2:32:55

     I, I taught for a little while, decided I'd get out of that and get in something safer.

388. 2:33:01

     And ...

389. 2:33:01

     Okay.

390. 2:33:03

     And, uh, Paul Griffin, who was a GBI agent that, that was doing this, that was a very good man, showed up at my house one morning and said, "I'd like you to ride to Atlanta with me."

391. 2:33:19

     I had on a pair of blue jeans and a fairly decent shirt, and I said, "Well, I'll ride with you. I'm off today." We got about halfway up here and I said, "By the way, where we going?" I assumed we were going to the crime lab or something like that. He said, "I'm going to the governor's office, and you're going with me.

392. 2:33:38

     And then you're gonna take the test for State Patrol in the Washington-Trinity building," which they gave twice a week over there. And I said, "Well, okay, I will do that." Um, I met with Governor Carter for just a few minutes. They sent me straight on over there to take the test. I made, I don't remember, 96, 98 on it, something like that. Came back and we talked about going to work for the bureau for a few minutes. At that time, I had been hired by the Chattanooga Police Department.

393. 2:34:15

     I went through their academy up until the last week. They came to me in the last week because I had some experience, and they offered me a deal. This was a 20-year retirement system. They said, "If you will go to work for us undercover for one year, we will promote you to detective at the end of that one year."

394. 2:34:36

     Mm-hmm.

395. 2:34:37

     And that would've made me just about the youngest detective in Chattanooga. At that time, I was making 20% more from Chattanooga Police Department than the troopers were making. And I explained this, and this series went on. I did not take the job.

396. 2:35:00

     A few months later, Paul asked me to come back up there and meet with him. Uh, Governor Carter was tied up. We spoke for just a moment or two, and the rest of my time was spent with Hamilton Jordan. And in that meeting, Hamilton Jordan assured me that if I took this cut in pay and came with the bureau, that I would be one of the GBI agents sent to the field to do field investigations, have my own counties assigned to me, and so on.

397. 2:35:32

     And I would be hired immediately because they had a semi-freeze on until the involuntary separation portion of the old, old retirement ran out in April the 1st of '72.

398. 2:35:47

     Mm-hmm.

399. 2:35:50

     I talked with them. They assured me that in the retirement, I would have a 3% COLA for the rest of my life after I retired. Now, that didn't come from a handbook or anything else. That came from the governor's office of an honorable man. Um,

400. 2:36:14

     unbeknownst to me, they'd already done my background. And when I agreed that day, they hired me, and that's what put me in the bureau. Um, now he mentioned a couple of incidences that we had, um, in my career. Um, Keith has asked me to touch on the last one just a little bit more to explain to you some of the stuff that we, we faced during that time. The incident in Morgan County was a gentleman that was ...

401. 2:36:49

     W- we had two Klans at that time, what we call the real Klan and the baby Klan. We used to go out and do this mess where we'd go to Klan rallies and stuff like that and, and make sure nothing happened, and they'd burn crosses and carry on. But then in Georgia, there was a segment in three states, three parts of the state, and that area being one of them, where we had really honest to goodness, vicious, hateful white supremacists. This individual that I had the incident with was such a man.

402. 2:37:22

     He was a Vietnam veteran that taught, uh, survival to Klan members. He, um ... After his death, we learned of instances that he had done to neighbors that we did not know about and were never reported, where he had a gun shop and a residence.

403. 2:37:45

     He would kill the animals of children that got on his property. In one instance, a person came to the sheriff after he was dead, they were so scared of him, and said that His two children had been behind his gun shop and he caught them there. He walked up into the yard, picked up their puppy, stabbed it with a knife, cut its guts open, and threw it up on the porch and said, "Don't ever come back on my property again." Now, that's the type of individuals that we dealt with from time to time. His crime on the first one was he and his brother-in-law murdered a Black man for dating a white woman.

404. 2:38:23

     Now, whether or not there were other instances that he had against this couple or not, we don't know. But they were in a truck, he was riding shotgun, literally. His brother-in-law was driving, pulled up beside the car, shot and killed him. We investigated that for four months.

405. 2:38:48

     The key to that, we, we would approach him at his residence. He would come out the back door with his hand on a .45 and talk to us in the yard. "If you ain't got a warrant, get out of here. I don't want to speak to you." We had two agents go up there and try to talk to him during the investigation. Both of them were met with that, and we, we knew that we were going to have, if we ever had an altercation with him, an altercation right in that instance. And I'm trying not to run along, but you need to know the facts on this. And if you want me to cut it really short, just tell me and I'll shut up.

406. 2:39:22

     But, um, about four months later, we were working on his brother-in-law, because that was the key to breaking him, because we weren't gonna break him.

407. 2:39:34

     His brother-in-law was found on a dirt road about 25 yards from his truck with a bottle beside him and a clean bullet hole in the back of his head. What we surmised is that our target decided he would take out the only witness against him, and him being a gunsmith that worked on guns, he said, "Let's go test this gun. Um, go set this bottle up," and killed him.

408. 2:40:12

     We worked around and got enough for a warrant on the brother-in-law case that we were going to that day.

409. 2:40:21

     Sonny King was the closest friend I had. He and I were in GBI school together. The reason we were in the second GBI school is because they sent all the newest people to the first one, and the, those of us that had been on a little while, they sent to the second one. Um,

410. 2:40:44

     we went by, got the sheriff and the chief deputy.

411. 2:40:50

     We anticipated the altercation taking place in the front yard, just like it had always been. Sonny, being my supervisor, told me to take a shotgun. He would place the car somewhere within 15 yards of where he was, or where we anticipated him being. I stood outside the door with the gun down where it couldn't be seen. And the old saying in the military is, you know, "All the plans in the world are wonderful until the first shot's fired." Well, that's very true.

412. 2:41:26

     We ended up getting him hemmed up in a gun shop. He was in the front door. We placed the car probably 15 yards from him. I asked Sonny specifically to put the chief deputy back there with a shotgun and let me go up there with him beforehand, and his statement was, "No, I want you back there with that shotgun." The last words that Sonny King said to me were, "If this thing goes to hell, you end it."

413. 2:42:00

     They talked. The sheriff was on the right side, the chief deputy was on the left side, our target was in the middle, and Sonny was in the middle. They told him that he was coming with them. He pulled a .45 out of his back, shot Sonny through the heart.

414. 2:42:16

     Gosh.

415. 2:42:17

     Mm-hmm.

416. 2:42:19

     Sonny was good enough with a gun to where when he saw him moving, he drew his gun and fired. Grazed him right here. He then turned and shot the chief deputy in the arm. Fortunately, there, Sonny fell clear. Fortunately, the other two

417. 2:42:37

     ran. Sheriff went that way, chief deputy went that way. That gave me a clear vision. I stepped out from behind the car, took one step forward. He fired one shot at me and went to the left, which is the only reason that the other three of us are still alive, because he had a fully automatic machine gun laying on the bench-

418. 2:43:00

     Mm.

419. 2:43:00

     -to his right that was loaded.

420. 2:43:02

     I understa- thank you, Mr. Da- Davis. I, I know you probably have some more comments, but we have a question, number 26.

421. 2:43:09

     Uh, uh, not really a question. I want to just make a statement. I, I've got to leave, and I want to tell you people that appreciate your service very much. I'm not leaving out, but I gotta go to game, fish, and parks. And today, we had so many meetings pile up and, and we would normally have more people here than that. But I will promise you that I will ... Not that I can do anything about this, or any of us may, collectively we can, but I promise you I'll watch this entire testimony this weekend.

422. 2:43:39

     I'm ... Well, thank you, sir. I'm just about finished, but ... And, and I don't tell this lightly, because I'm gonna tell you, when Keith asked me to tell this story, I told it to him, and I thought back, and this is the first time that I've told this story in probably 15 years. It's not something I relish reliving.

423. 2:44:03

     The target moved to the left in the building. I fired my first shot through the wall of the building thinking I had him.

424. 2:44:11

     Mm-hmm.

425. 2:44:11

     Unbeknownst to me, there was a metal lathe there. I got one of the nine buckshot in his arm and one in his hip. He stepped back into the door, fired three more shots at me, and I fired two more shots at him, and he had his hand on that machine gun-

426. 2:44:26

     Oh

427. 2:44:26

     ... when I dropped him. Now, in the back of the building was his pickup truck. In his pickup truck, he had 13, 14 guns, over 5,000 rounds of ammunition, MREs, and clothes. He knew we were coming. He had some type of leak in the courthouse. And we've surmised that he intended to shoot it out with all four of us and then go make some type of statement-

428. 2:44:59

     Mm-hmm

429. 2:45:02

     ... um, in the State of Georgia after that.

430. 2:45:04

     Hmm.

431. 2:45:05

     Um, now, I'm not unique. Don't think that I am. All officers that spend their career in this have these black days and these black situations.

432. 2:45:20

     Mm-hmm.

433. 2:45:21

     It, it's not just something that I have.

434. 2:45:24

     Mm-hmm.

435. 2:45:24

     There are people in this room that have got the same thing. There's nothing special about me, but this is what law enforcement was at that time.

436. 2:45:33

     Mm-hmm.

437. 2:45:35

     And this is what we gave to the State of Georgia willingly. Um, I'll add one other thing. I've often thought,

438. 2:45:49

     Jimmy Carter and I got along well, what little bit I got to know him through Paul. He was a good, honorable man. We, I'm conservative. We did not necessarily agree politically, but we got along well for what little interaction that I had with that man, and I s- he explained what he was trying to do with bringing the Bureau into a real prominent agency, and that's the reason I came with him, that and the promises that they made.

439. 2:46:19

     And I've often wondered what he would think-

440. 2:46:21

     Mm

441. 2:46:22

     ... and this is no fault of yours and no fault of ours, but about the fact that we were promised a 3% COLA that we counted on, and it was taken from us.

442. 2:46:33

     Mm-hmm.

443. 2:46:36

     Any questions?

444. 2:46:40

     Any questions for Mr. Davis?

445. 2:46:44

     Thank you.

446. 2:46:44

     Thank you so much for your service, sir, sincerely. Daryl Worth.

447. 2:46:51

     Yes, sir. Um, if you-

448. 2:46:53

     And then Damon Winters is our next speaker after that. Mr. Worth.

449. 2:46:56

     Yes, sir. I'm gonna be quick. If you're like I am, I'm ready to go, and I know you are, too. But I, I appreciate your time. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

450. 2:47:03

     Well, this is an important subject with some important people, but go ahead.

451. 2:47:06

     Yes, and I'm, I'm a private person, so this is hard for me to kinda go back through. But, um, but I do wanna tell my story because I know it's important. It's important for these folks that are back here as well. Uh, started my career in, uh, '93. Went to work for Henry County Police Department while I was trying to pursue being a game warden. Took me six years to get on, but that's what I wanted to do. Got on, and, um, I worked Greene County, uh, very rural area.

452. 2:47:37

     The incident took place on my behalf back in, uh, April 1st of '17. I, we, we, most of the time were by ourself, but I was probably six miles from a paved road. I was probably a mile back in the woods. Uh, nothing's routine. I laugh when people say, "Routine stop. Routine stop." There's nothing a- uh, about routine about what we do. But, uh, found a vehicle. I was familiar with the property, had been on it multiple times.

453. 2:48:09

     These guys were habitual violators. I was going in to what I thought was going to address a couple turkey violations, maybe check a couple license. They were in there hunting turkeys illegally.

454. 2:48:21

     Mm-hmm.

455. 2:48:21

     Uh, always when I'm, when I'm by myself, uh, which, thank goodness we have CAD systems now, but we can leave a digital trail, but, uh, ran the tag number, uh, ran the subject's information through our Go Outdoor system to where if something did happen, they would have something to start with. That's the way I think. Uh, got out of my vehicle, started pursuing. I usually try to, to get to, to a location dealing with turkey hunters before they even get there. So that way I know how many boots I have on the ground, how many heads, how many people I'm dealing with.

456. 2:48:54

     Because a lot of times these folks are wearing ghillie suits. You'll walk right, I mean, I've walked right by a guy sitting with loaded shotguns or whatever, and, um, just miss him. But in this case, I rounded up the first guy, went down a logging road, and, um, the, uh, logging road started forking off in multiple directions. Like I said, I was familiar with the property, so I said, "We're gonna sit tight right here. He's gonna come back to his vehicle, um, and he's gonna be coming down this road." And I was, I was stationed to where I could see 100 yards down this way and probably 60 yards down this way, and I was just having a nice conversation with the guy.

457. 2:49:38

     I looked down the road, and I see him. And, uh, and just as soon as, and, and, a- and he was probably about 80 yard- He shot me at 82 yards, uh, and I'm just, I stand here before you, I believe in divine intervention. I don't fear death. I fear being a, a, a liability to my family. You know, I don't wanna be a burden to my family. But I'm gonna share with you several things that, um, that happened Uh, the Lord just was looking after me that day.

458. 2:50:11

     But he shot me at 82 yards, 12-gauge shotgun, number four high brass. And there was... I was in a, uh, pine thicket, and there was a pine tree growing right 20 feet from when he shot, which, which took the, the bulk of the shot. And that pine tree shouldn't have been growing there. Thank goodness the guy was hunting with a l- with a, a, a legal weapon, uh, which, hunting turkey's a shotgun. Thank goodness he wasn't hunting with a rifle that day.

459. 2:50:42

     Um, and, um, just as soon as I heard pop, he knocked me back. I kind of got my bearings right, just thankful that everything was fine. GBI investigated it, charged the guy. Um, you know, I look back, I f- I find things. When game wardens get shot in the woods, it's, it's mistaken for game.

460. 2:51:04

     Mm.

461. 2:51:05

     If I would've been shot on the roadway, it would've been aggravated assault. But, you know, that's just the way the, i- it rolls. Um, a lot of times we don't have the luxury of calling in Main Street and East Street and everybody knowing where we're at. Um, but I've always had an excellent working relationship with the guys, the troopers in my area, the agents in my area. It's a brotherhood. But I appreciate it. I appreciate my opportunity to share my story. Thank you for your time.

462. 2:51:37

     Thank you, Mr. Ward.

463. 2:51:41

     Damon Winters.

464. 2:51:43

     Yes, sir. Uh, thank y'all for, uh, seeing me, allowing me to talk. Uh, probably about the nervous I've ever been.

465. 2:51:50

     That's okay.

466. 2:51:53

     Uh, uh, I started with the Game and Fish, uh, back in 1988, and, uh, I was hired on to give me a chance. At the time, I was the youngest uniform game warden in the state, and, uh, 32 and a half years later or so when I retired, I was the longest serving uniformed officer in the state. The Game and Fish was good to me. Best job I ever had. Uh, the situation that the colonel was talking about I was involved in, again, I've, I just happened to be the guy that was there close to the boats, uh, lived in a, the only law enforcement division house there next to the Sapelo Dock, if anybody's familiar with that.

467. 2:52:32

     We kept our patrol boats there at the dock. And, uh, so when the call came out about, uh, two capsized vessels in Sapelo Sound, people in the water, I was able to grab my, uh, boat bag that we all had ready to go just for this occa- kind of occasion, jump in the boat and was en route pretty quick. Uh, talking back and to with McIntosh on the radio, they were kind of giving me some updates. Uh, one of the individuals on top of one of the capsized boats had a phone that worked for a little bit, so he was g- able to get some information to me.

468. 2:53:04

     And, uh, so I made me, my way around there. What they were doing were fishing in a creek behind Blackbeard Island. Blackbeard Creek's known for, uh, good flounder fishing, reds, and that kind of thing, and it's normally no problem to get across Sapelo Sound out there to it and back, unless one of those storms kicks up. It was, uh, as rough as I'd ever seen it out there. I was worried once I made my way into the sound. Uh, McIntosh was calling for an ETA. Coasties were calling. Uh, I told them, you know, basically it was rough out here.

469. 2:53:35

     I'm getting there quick as I can, and, uh, worried that I wasn't gonna be able to see them because the waves were so big. I was taking a lot of water over the bow, uh, hard to see, and, uh, I actually caught sight of, uh, one of the boats, the bow of the boat bobbing up and down. So when I got to them, I had seven people in the water: three adults, two men, one woman, a five-year-old child, and then three teenage boys. Um-

470. 2:54:00

     Mm

471. 2:54:00

     ... the mama and the child, the five-year-old, were on top of the boat with the daddy kind of hanging onto the side of the boat. The other three juveniles and the other, uh, the uncle were around the other boat that was capsized. They were fairly close together, but I had a problem with the wind being so strong. When I tried to approach bow first, it was throwing me around, so the only choice I had to keep the boat straight enough, uh, where I could get ahold of somebody, 'cause I'd have to leave the helm, you know, to get there to them and pull them in. I had to turn the transom back around, the stern, into the wind, which actually, with the T-top on the boat, kept me fairly straight, so I was able to come alongside the mother and the child and the daddy and, that was on that boat and keep it straight enough, worrying about, you know, I got props now facing my victims in the water, so you gotta be careful.

472. 2:54:46

     You, you know, you don't wanna cut your victims up with your own props. And, uh, and then being able to leave the helm long enough to get them, because I was taking a good bit of water over the transom there, over the stern, and, uh, and you gotta be careful about pushing too much water into your exhaust or it'll shut your motors down, blow your power pack, and everybody's dead in the water. So, uh, it, it worked out. I was able to pull alongside of them. I actually, uh, she threw the five-year-old at me and I was able to get him. His lips were blue, hypothermic.

473. 2:55:17

     It's freezing cold in summer, if you can imagine, when you get under those cold winds and those storms. So I put him there right in front of the helm, and, uh, was able to get the daddy in then. And, uh, when, once I got the daddy in, I had somebody to help grab folks for me, was able to get the mama in. Then we maneuvered the vessel. I was able to pull around and get up alongside close enough to get the, uh, other three juveniles and the other man aboard. And I'll never forget the, the five-year-old. He's right between my legs there. He looked up at me and he said, "Are we gonna be all right?"

474. 2:55:47

     Aw.

475. 2:55:47

     And I said, "Bud, as soon as I can get us to the hill, we're gonna be just fine." And, uh, so I dropped the hammer and headed in, let McIntosh know that we had all the SOBs on board, souls on board. And, uh, uh, fire and rescue was coming out. At the time, they met me at the back of the sound. They had a little more advanced life-saving, uh, equipment on their boat, so I was able to transfer the mama and the young child over to their boat. Uh, all I had was, uh, I had one of those little space blanks to put around him. But the mom and his lips were both blue, and then come to find out, he had to get flew to Savannah because he had taken in a little salt water and, uh, was in danger of expiring, uh, because of it.

476. 2:56:26

     It's a, a secondary drowning, uh, is the term, I think. But they were able to do good. Uh, he come back fine. Uh, the family was so gracious, and I ... A little uncomfortable with that. Like I said, I was just a guy that was there. Any one of my guys would've been there would've done the same thing.

477. 2:56:42

     When did this happen, Mr. Worth?

478. 2:56:44

     Uh, it would've been tw- uh, 2018 now, Jean?

479. 2:56:51

     Uh-huh.

480. 2:56:51

     2017, 2018.

481. 2:56:54

     Okay.

482. 2:56:54

     Uh, there in Macintosh. I was assigned Macintosh, Long, and Wayne.

483. 2:56:58

     Okay.

484. 2:56:58

     And, uh, the matter of fact, the ch- like I said, the family's kept in touch. Brought me more shrimp than I could eat. And, uh, and, uh, just very appreciative, man. And I was glad, good Lord, no doubt about it, God in that boat, keeping that darn thing straight long enough for me to leave the helm and get them in to begin with was, uh ... That's the only way I can explain it.

485. 2:57:18

     Okay.

486. 2:57:18

     And that was, uh, happy. You know, uh, turned out happy, and you feel exhilarated, uh, after you get over being scared to death, uh, from during the s- time it was happening. And, uh, and again, like, uh, was said earlier, I'm not unique. All these, uh, men and women that wear the uniform have got these experiences. Uh, like I said, over a 33-year career that I had, uh, you, you see a lot of people that's having their worst day. Y- and you try to remember that. And, uh, I know we got a call to a southeast county, do- Georgia county.

487. 2:57:53

     A sheriff said he needed help. "Well, what do you need, Sheriff?" Uh, we worked as close with the sheriff's offices as, uh, you can. That's ... I'm working with Sheriff Ramsey Bennett now in Pierce County as patrol commander. Uh, he called me needing some help, and after the third hurricane, uh, just about hammered us. Course, before I moved to the coast, hadn't a hurricane hit Georgia in 100 years. Three of them hit while I was down there. And I had my stuff packed, and I had my time in, so I said, "Sheriff, I'm coming home," which I was 25 years game warden there in Pierce County. And you, well, game and fish officers become a part of the community.

488. 2:58:24

     Uh, everybody knows the game warden.

489. 2:58:26

     Right.

490. 2:58:26

     So, uh-

491. 2:58:27

     Right

492. 2:58:27

     ... it was a home there. All the young'uns and grand young'uns were there. So I come back home, and I've been working with him, uh, for the last six years now since I retired. And, uh, but the sheriff in that south Georgia county called needing help. He had two children drowned in a bar pit. He needed a boat. You go over there with the boat, get in the bar pit. It's not too hard. It's not a very big area, big as y'all's chairs right here. And, uh, we put the boat in. Oh, dang.

493. 2:58:59

     We recovered the six and eight-year-old boy.

494. 2:59:02

     Oh.

495. 2:59:02

     Okay?

496. 2:59:03

     Oh.

497. 2:59:04

     And, uh, we had to hand those young'uns over to the daddy. He insisted on carrying his sons up, putting them in the, uh, uh, ambulance. And like I said, uh, what do you say, uh, to a family going through that? You share that pain with them, I guess. And, uh, it's just, God awful. What else can you say? And you know, you see these boys in blue back here, they run up on these crashes the same way.

498. 2:59:32

     Uh-huh.

499. 2:59:33

     We work, there's boat wrecks. Uh, it's just, it's horrible, but, uh, that's what the state pays you to do. Uh, that's your job. So you get up, and you go handle your job, and, uh, and do the best you can. So I appreciate y'all, uh, what y'all do. God help you. Uh, I know what it is like, uh, solving problems, man. And, uh, anything y'all can do, I'm, I am so grateful for the retirement I get from the state. And now that along with my, uh, pay from the sheriff's office, I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm gonna pay the power bill, or if I gotta find somebody doing a roofing job this weekend that I can help out and make money, uh, doing some framing work where I can help them, uh, and make some money to pay the power bill or, or get some new cleats for my daughter 'cause she's playing softball.

500. 3:00:21

     You know, that kind of thing. So I'm blessed. I'm blessed with the retirement. Uh, I earned it, I feel like.

501. 3:00:27

     Mm.

502. 3:00:28

     I turned in six years of leave that I didn't take with the state. Uh, and I've dedicated to the job, but I was just, I was so thankful that they took a chance on a, a 21-year-old that just got out of the Army. They could've went either way. Uh, Sergeant Ralph Shepherd was our training coordinator in the first academy that went through Forsyth. And, uh, I went up for Ranger of the Year about three years later after I'd, uh, uh, graduated the academy and was assigned to Pierce County. I was turning out on my own. And he was up there. I did pretty good on the board.

503. 3:00:59

     I didn't win.

504. 3:01:00

     Okay.

505. 3:01:00

     But he told me, he said, "Damon, I, I knew you either wouldn't make it six months, or you'd be one of the best we got. Good job." And I, I appreciate that. I appreciate his confidence in me, so, uh-

506. 3:01:09

     Mr. Worth, we got a question for you if you don't mind.

507. 3:01:12

     Yes.

508. 3:01:13

     Uh, Senator McLaurin.

509. 3:01:14

     Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much for your story.

510. 3:01:17

     Yeah.

511. 3:01:17

     I mean, I don't want to be repetitive, but I think one thing I'll say is we don't get the opportunity to hear stories like this- Uh-huh ... very often. Yeah. I mean, I was just telling Senator Orrock I could sit here and listen all night just because, you know, we, we get in these committee rooms, and we'll, we'll pass bills quickly. We'll talk about them for 10 minutes and then move on, and it's a very rushed process a lot of times. And I think as legislators, we don't get a very fulsome opportunity very often to interact directly with the folks who are giving their everything for this.

512. 3:01:45

     Okay.

513. 3:01:46

     And so, you know, it's, it's also easy to say thank you for your service. I mean, we talk to veterans and-

514. 3:01:50

     Yes, sir

515. 3:01:50

     ... law enforcement all the time, and it's very easy for a politician to say, "Hey, thank you."

516. 3:01:54

     Yeah.

517. 3:01:54

     But it's a, it's a different thing to, to listen to these stories. So I just want to emphasize how much of a service and a gift you're giving us today to give us the opportunity to interact directly with this, because I don't think it's possible for us to make an informed choice on something like a COLA or any other policy decision without really feeling in our bones the very human aspect to all this. So I just want to say thank you for the gift.

518. 3:02:18

     Uh, yes, sir. Absolutely. Thank you.

519. 3:02:21

     Thank you, Mr. Worth.

520. 3:02:22

     Yes, sir.

521. 3:02:24

     Damon Winters, was that-

522. 3:02:26

     Yes, sir.

523. 3:02:27

     You were, Mr. Winter. Okay. Thank you very much.

524. 3:02:29

     Yes, sir.

525. 3:02:29

     That, that was...

526. 3:02:32

     I'm sorry, what?

527. 3:02:33

     Oh, no, I'm just-

528. 3:02:34

     We're just chatting.

529. 3:02:35

     We're just chatting. Okay.

530. 3:02:36

     Hearing the stories told so-

531. 3:02:38

     Very good

532. 3:02:39

     ... so, so candidly is-

533. 3:02:40

     Well, I, uh, i- in the sense of bipartisanship, I, I can't agree with the Senator McLaurin, which I never thought I would say. But, um, but to hear these stories, it, it is. It, it is... So many times we're just looking at, uh, legislation and so forth and it's, um, it's eye-opening to hear the real stories-

534. 3:02:57

     Uh-huh

535. 3:02:57

     ... from real people about the sacrifices being made, um, across our state. Vice Chairman Franklin.

536. 3:03:04

     I just want to say one, one... I, I've spoken to a, a couple of you guys before in different meetings that we had, you know, and, um, I just want to thank you all for coming up here. I know we, we all do. But, you know, it, what was enlightening to me is that everyone that came up here to spo- to speak, um, referenced a, a divine intervention, a higher power, a god stepping in. I could tell that everyone had a very strong faith, and I would think that living your lifestyle, living the job that you do, you would have to. You probably couldn't make it without it. Or if you didn't have one, you'd get one quick, I would assume.

537. 3:03:36

     But, um, you know, we have, we do have busy days and all this, you know. And even after this, we're going to another meeting, but I want to tell you this has been a highlight of my day, to hear these stories.

538. 3:03:44

     Yes.

539. 3:03:44

     And I know I could speak for all the guys up here, um, the representatives and the senators up here. I truly appreciate y'all coming up here. And don't think that it's not, um, falling on deaf ears, 'cause we hear what you've done for the state, um, and the state needs to keep the promise, in my opinion.

540. 3:04:02

     Yep.

541. 3:04:02

     But I appreciate you guys. Thank you for coming up.

542. 3:04:04

     Absolutely.

543. 3:04:11

     I, I just want to echo on that. It, you know, so many times we, we vote on a, we vote on a budget, and we set certain amounts, and we see DNR, we see Department of Corrections, we see State Patrol and MCCD, but it's just very eye-opening to, to hear from real people real stories, uh, and struggles that people have g- and sacrifice that people have gone through. Uh, number 15, is that Debbie? Representative Buckner.

544. 3:04:35

     Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to echo saying thank you for sharing, 'cause I know it was difficult and to have to relive all of that. And, um, as a former state employee that is retired too, and a member of the Georgia State Retirees Association, I d- I don't mean any disrespect to anybody in the system or on this board, but it is true, and it happened to me as well, that I was told, "You won't make much money working for the state, but you'll have good benefits." Um, I can't honestly remember them telling me I'd have the 3% COLA, but they said I'd have a good retirement, and I'd have holidays, and paid time off, and, and it, and I did.

545. 3:05:17

     And I enjoyed my time working for the state. But I have since, since I've been on this committee, seen at least one handbook that did promise the COLA. And I, I, I know I've worn myself out. Every year that I've been on this committee, I have asked for the COLA at every opportunity. And I think Mr. Potsman has gotten to where he just expects it at some time during the legislative session. And it hasn't, a- and I still want us to find a way.

546. 3:05:49

     And I think, I think we may be on that path. It feels like it's taking forever, and it feels like the, it shouldn't take as long as it is. And I agree with McLaurin, Senator McLaurin. If we have a surplus, that is taxpayer money. That's right. And it should be used for the people who serve the taxpayers, and we need to figure out a way to solve this problem, and sooner, not later.

547. 3:06:22

     Thank you.

548. 3:06:24

     Thank you very much, Representative Buckner. That's all our, um, that's all our speakers for the night. Uh, uh, or, or that, that have signed up anyways. Um, it's 6:15. Colonel Hitchens, w- well, I would ask you to come to the podium. I, I know you can... Or you can come to the table, either one.

549. 3:06:45

     Colonel Hitchens.

550. 3:06:45

     I just want to kind of summarize what we've heard here today. You know, I spent 43 years in state government before I retired. Two months after I retired, I qualified to run for the State House. And, uh, throughout our careers, you've heard the stories, and I can tell you, you know, I've been in four shootouts. I was in a running gun battle with an armed robber of 25 miles on I-95. I had a mental patient pull a switchblade on me and chase me around the car. I had a guy that I was chasing, went into a house, ran down the hallway, reached in a closet, pulled out a shotgun, and stuck it in my face and said, "You better get the hell out of here before I blow your brains out." And I jumped out the window, uh, and, and went and got my shotgun.

551. 3:07:26

     I was 30, I was, I was 35 feet from the bomb in Centennial Park when it went off. And these aren't unusual stories. I mean, it's throughout. When I was the commissioner, I've been the department head in two different agencies. When I was the commissioner, I used to routinely go to, go down to Grady when they were medevacing somebody in, been beat up, beat with a tire iron, stabbed, uh, shot.

552. 3:07:47

     Yeah.

553. 3:07:47

     You know, 15 members of our department killed while I was there. I knew every one of them, at, at least briefly. And, uh, my roommate in trooper school was killed. I came on the State Patrol in 1969. I had just gotten... I got out of the Marines because I'd been back from Vietnam two years, and the rotation was you go over there for 13 months, you come back two years, and it's time to go again. I took a significant loss in pay. I made $450 an hour when I was, uh, when I was first hired. But what these people feel like is they worked, they did what they were supposed to do, and they felt like somebody was guarding their retirement.

554. 3:08:25

     People- who were entrusted with it were taking care of it, and when they retired, they would get that. My wife's a state retiree. I'm in good shape. I mean, I was a department head. I got a good retirement. Uh, I was a senior officer in the military. I got a retirement from them. My wife's a retired state employee. We both get Medicare. Uh, but what I feel sorry for is I had a lot of people in my agency back then who made $25,000 or $30,000 a year, radio operators and licensing examiners, and they retired on a pretty meager retirement.

555. 3:08:56

     And, uh, and, you know, over this 18 years, that's over 50% that they've lost. And my oldest daughter's a retired teacher. You know, she gets her 3% every year. And I had two aunts that were teachers. They, they got theirs and-

556. 3:09:09

     Yeah

557. 3:09:09

     ... there just seems to be some inequity, and I don't know, I don't know whose fault it is. I mean, uh, but they just feel like they've been betrayed by the state. Uh-

558. 3:09:19

     Okay

559. 3:09:20

     ... you know, as long as they were milking the cow and getting milk, everything was fine. When it went dry, uh, you know, it was kind of push you aside.

560. 3:09:27

     Understood.

561. 3:09:29

     And that's all. That's all I got. I won't-

562. 3:09:30

     Any questions?

563. 3:09:31

     I know y'all are tired.

564. 3:09:32

     Any questions for Carl? This is an important subject.

565. 3:09:36

     It is.

566. 3:09:36

     Thank you, Carl.

567. 3:09:37

     Sure.

568. 3:09:38

     I, I, I just wanna to, to thank everybody again for coming here. I just... One more round of applause for all the, the sacrifice and service.

569. 3:09:50

     And the service to our state. And, um, I, I know, um, Chairman Williams couldn't make it, uh, Senator Williams, but I, I hope this is not, uh, end of the conversation. I s- sure hope this is the beginning of the conversation on this. So thank you very much for coming. I know a number of people have a, a ways to go, uh, home or to a hotel or what have you. Appreciate you being here. Meeting adjourned.