×

County mulls lower retirement age to help recruit police

Change would require update to state law; unfunded liabilities stand in the way

Maui Police Department officers stand at attention Dec. 15 during the swearing-in ceremony for Chief John Pelletier. The Maui County Council is supporting a proposal to help recruit and retain police officers by eliminating the retirement age requirement of 55. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

A proposal to eliminate the requirement that police officers be 55 years old before they can retire is gaining support as a way to help recruit and retain police officers.

“The police is really struggling,” said Council Member Tamara Paltin, who said she introduced resolutions supporting the proposal after talking with Maui Police Department members.

Under current law, officers must both have 25 years of service and be 55 years old to qualify for retirement. Officers must be age 60 to retire with less than 25 years on the job. The requirements apply to police officers hired after June 30, 2012.

Officers hired before then can retire at any age after serving for 25 years.

“We desperately need to get back to that as a recruiting tool and a retention tool,” police Assistant Chief Reid Pursley said at a meeting Wednesday of the Council’s Government Relations, Ethics and Transparency Committee. “We’re losing our local talent to the Mainland.”

The proposal to eliminate the age requirement was supported by the seven council members attending the meeting. They voted to include the proposal in the legislative package for the Maui County Council and recommend its inclusion in the Hawaii State Association of Counties’ legislative package.

Eliminating the age requirement may necessitate a change in state law.

David Underwood, director of the county Department of Personnel Services, said it may be an issue because state law prohibits retirement benefit enhancements, including reduction of the retirement age, until the state Employee Retirement System is fully funded.

He said the Legislature made revisions to retirement benefits for public employees in 2012 in response to the unfunded liabilities in the retirement system. He said the system is 53 or 54 percent funded with a $14 billion shortfall.

“Those broad strokes were taken,” Paltin said. “Now it’s 10 years later and we have had time to see the impacts. I don’t know if anyone would say it’s safe to operate with three-fourths of our force.”

With 25 percent of the 400 positions for police officers unfilled, MPD has been using funding for the vacant positions to pay overtime to officers, Paltin said.

“We’re paying more for less hours of work,” she said. “The police themselves are overworked. I wouldn’t want anyone to be overworked, but especially if you’re looking out for our safety.”

Paltin, who worked as an ocean safety officer for 20 years before being elected to the West Maui residency seat on the council, said that when she began her former job, lifeguards, firefighters and police officers could retire after working 25 years at any age.

She said law enforcement agencies in other states allow police officers to retire with pensions after 20 and 25 years, offering better incentives to officers if they move out of the state. “We might be training folks and losing people,” she said. “We are in dire need.”

MPD Sgt. Nick Krau, Maui Chapter chairman of the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, said Sunday that the union backs the proposal to eliminate the age 55 retirement requirement.

“Hawaii’s police departments are understaffed and this is having a negative impact on public safety,” he said. “This staffing crisis shows no signs of improvement and on Maui, the Police Department is around 100 fewer officers versus what the budget calls for. Our recent member survey also indicates that an additional 100 officers plan to leave within the next two years.”

He said 25 percent of officers who have left MPD since January did so before meeting the minimum retirement requirements. “We expect this trend to increase,” he said.

“To retain our existing officers, we must have competitive pay and benefits,” Krau said. “Requiring officers to be at least 55 years old and have 25 years of service before they can retire is pushing officers to seek employment with other agencies that have in place a more realistic retirement system.

“Other retirement systems recognize that policing is a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding profession. Requiring officers to work more than 25 years to qualify for retirement or turn 60 to retire with less than 25 years will continue to drive officers out of Hawaii. They’ll make that choice to protect their health and to provide for their families.”

Krau said the solution proposed by Paltin “provides an incentive for officers to work 25 years for our department, retaining officers with valued experience and community relationships and not breaking these officers physically and/or emotionally in the service of our communities.”

The resolutions cite a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information that found police officers “generally have shorter life expectancy due to stress, shift work, obesity, and exposure to hazardous work environments.”

“The study also found that a male police officer who reached age 50 between 1950 and 2005 was expected to live only 7.8 additional years, while a man in the general population of the United States that reached age 50 in the same time period was expected to live an additional 35 years,” according to the resolutions.

Male police officers age 50 to 54 “had a nearly 40 percent probability of death compared to a 1 percent probability for males in the general population in the same age category,” the resolutions said.

Pursley said the study findings about life expectancy after retirement were “pretty disturbing.”

“It’s obviously the stress of the job, the shift work we have to do, exposure to some of the hazardous environments we have to work in,” he said. “Our work has only gotten harder, our stress has gotten more.

“As officers, we have made so many sacrifices,” Pursley said. “We’re dedicated to protecting the community, but that leads to missing birthdays, we miss anniversaries, graduations . . . All of that comes at the expense of our loved ones.”

Paltin said there were 184 submissions of testimony for the bill, with all in support except for three opposing the bill. She said the three that opposed the bill “wanted it to be even more beneficial,” including to allow police officers to retire after less than 25 years.

One submission said the state needs “to start competing” with pay and retirement benefits offered by law enforcement departments on the Mainland.

“If we fail to do that, officers will feel less supported by their community and government, and will unfortunately leave to departments that offer better support systems and benefits for their officers,” the unsigned testimony to the committee said. “We are fighting for every last officer we can get and right now we’re losing. We too may reach a point where 911 calls go unanswered because we don’t have the staffing numbers to uphold adequate response times.”

In supporting the bill, a police officer who was hired before 2012 and wouldn’t be affected said, “There currently exists two groups within the Maui Police Department” based on when officers were hired. “This creates somewhat of a resentment amongst some officers who must work side by side with officers, and yet receive a lesser retirement,” the officer said.

The officer said those hired after 2012 must work five years longer to receive a smaller percentage retirement. “Most officers understand this difference and have already expressed a desire to leave if this is not changed in the future,” the officer wrote.

* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper?
     
Support Local Journalism on Maui

Only $99/year

Subscribe Today