Attempts ramp up to allow some professions to return to work after retirement without losing benefits

A lawmaker wants to try again in the 2024 Legislature to pass a law allowing certain professions to return to work after retiring without losing their pension benefits. Similar efforts failed to make it through the Roundhouse in the 2023 legislative session.

Lawmakers narrowly voted in support of the concept on Monday.

Rep. Bill Rehm, R-Albuquerque, presented the idea to the legislative Investments and Pensions Oversight Committee, explaining that police officers, corrections and detention officers, civilians who retire from police or corrections, and water resource professionals or managers would qualify under the legislation.

Rehm, who is a retired police officer, said in order to qualify, workers must be retired by Dec. 31 and sit out for 127 days before returning. He said this would be a three-year open window, and anyone who returns to work would still contribute to pension plans but not gain future benefits.

Details could change as the legislation is being written. The deadline to introduce legislation for the 2024 session is Jan. 31.

Rehm was a sponsor of two bills focused on public employee and public safety retirees in the 2023 Legislature that failed to make it past committee. In 2024, a 30-day session, lawmakers will have half the time to pass bills.

Lawmakers on the committee were split on Monday on the proposal. Some voiced support because of high staff vacancies at New Mexico detention centers. More than half of the detention centers in the state range from a 20% to a 57% vacancy rate, according to the New Mexico Association of Counties.

Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Albuquerque, said she often sees signs at detention centers advertising open positions, some that have been unfilled for more than a year. She said she doesn’t know how to entice people to these jobs.

“If we are recruiting first-time newcomers, that is great. But for all of those places who cannot get people, I think it’s an issue,” she said.

Other lawmakers argued against the bill because of the detention center vacancies. Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero, D-Albuquerque, said there are structural and institutional issues at these facilities that a bill like this can’t solve.

“We’re not doing enough to support their (employee) retention … We’re not listening to them about what it is that they need in order to be able to stay in their positions — not just the salary, but it has to be associated with working conditions,” she said.

Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, said positions like the ones Stefanics sees unfilled are historically underpaid, and there’s no requirement in this bill to pay more.

“It almost encourages continuing to underpay people, and then get people whose salaries are subsidized by the retirement system,” he said.

The proposed legislation’s effect on police officers was brought up as well. Rep. Cynthia Borrego, D-Albuquerque, said it seems like an effort to recruit and retain officers.

“The issue that I’m concerned with and that I’m grappling with is that recruitment and retention should not be a pension issue,” Borrego said.

Rehm said agencies still would have recruitment efforts. He also said the Albuquerque Police Department asked to be exempt from the legislation, as drafted.

Rep. Natalie Figueroa, D-Albuquerque, said there could be other departments also big enough to be excluded from the bill.

“One man down in a two-man department is tremendously different,” Figueroa said.

A few legislators also voiced concerns with how fast people who are rehired could move up the ranks. Rep. Eliseo Lee Alcon, D-Milan, said someone who is newly hired could be assigned tougher jobs, while a rehire would get easier work.

He said that could affect retention rates, if new hires see rehires getting easier jobs.

“I don’t see anything for the new person,” he said.

Rehm said rehires could only advance according to standard operating procedure. He also said, in response to Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, who voiced similar worries, that agencies wouldn’t hire back a “problem officer.”

“I would hope that someone with 25 years of service would do better than a five-year person,” Rehm said.

Roybal Caballero said the standard operating procedure would allow people who already have worked there to move up the ranks faster than new hires.

“They’re going to have the upper hand,” she said. “They’re going to have the benefit.”

The bill is being rewritten to address some language and structural issues Ivey-Soto brought up. Instead of voting on the legislation as a firm bill, the committee voted 5-4 on their support for the concept.

Sedillo Lopez said she voted in support of the idea knowing the bill would likely change.

“And I think that’s probably a good thing,” she said.