Legislation to Support: SB 2

Even as lawmakers struggle with the possibility of deep cuts to state services, the road to a bump in the monthly pension checks for nearly 125,000 state retirees and their survivors — living mostly in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas — begins Monday when a Louisiana Senate panel is scheduled to take up a cost of living adjustment bill.

“They’ll get a COLA because there’s enough money, but the funding mechanism means different amounts,” said Senate Retirement Committee Chairman Barrow Peacock, R-Shreveport.

In Peacock’s Senate Bill 2, pensioners over the age of 60, who have been retired for at least a year and are drawing checks from one of the four state systems, would receive, starting July 1, a 1.5 percent increase for state workers and teachers; 1.8 percent bump for public school employees; and 2 percent more for State Police. It calculates out to an average increase of about $30 per month for retirees, but the exact amounts are difficult to determine and depend on many variables.

If approved, it would be the first increase in two years.

Read more at The Advocate.