A group of police, fire and corrections employees have filed a class action lawsuit against the state, seeking to restore pension benefits that were cut more than a decade ago.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Merrimack County Superior Court, takes aim at changes New Hampshire lawmakers made to the state pension system in 2011, amid the fallout from the Great Recession.
Those changes reduced pension benefits for “Group II” employees – a category that includes state and local police officers, firefighters and corrections workers – who had less than 10 years of service as of 2012. It also extended the number of years they would have to work before retiring with benefits.
The plaintiffs in the case – a municipal police officer, a firefighter and three current or retired corrections workers – say they’ve been forced to delay their retirements, and will retire with smaller pensions than they would have under the old system. Some say they stand to lose out on $20,000 or more per year.
The lawsuit argues the 2011 changes amounted to a retroactive law – in violation of the state constitution – by altering benefits that employees had been promised when they were hired years earlier.
“Our firefighters should never have to worry about whether their benefits will remain intact throughout their career – just as the public should never have to worry about whether or not, when they call 911, whether or not someone will show up,” one of the plaintiffs, Portsmouth Fire Captain Brian Ryll, said at a news conference in Concord Thursday. Ryll also leads a statewide firefighters’ union.
Seifu Ragassa, a chief probation and parole officer who’s leading the effort to reverse the cuts, said the pension changes have made it harder to hire and retain qualified public-safety personnel in New Hampshire.
“We have the Department of Corrections, currently about 50% vacancy rate,” he said. “We have National Guard covering our prisons. We have police departments struggling to staff their positions. We have firefighters struggling.”
The lawsuit would apply only to the 1,800 or so active and retired Group II workers who were hired before July 2011, but had not yet reached 10 years of service by then. It would not affect the benefits of people hired afterwards.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Gov. Chris Sununu criticized the employees for going to court, noting lawmakers already passed a bill this year restoring $26 million in benefits for those pre-2011 hires.
“The Group II that I just gave tens of millions of dollars to? That agreed to the deal and wanted all that? They're going to sue us for more money? Shocking,” the governor said.
Sununu said lawmakers had found a “common-ground solution that was affordable, that wasn't going to bankrupt the system that closed this gap and loophole.”
He also pushed back on the idea that the state’s pension structure is a major driver of staff shortages, and said the relief sought in the lawsuit wouldn’t do anything to improve hiring, since it only applies to existing employees.
“If we're trying to match Massachusetts and their pension fund, you know, where people are getting like 300,000, getting paid $300,000 a year in triple time and walking away with, you know, massive six-digit pension funds – like, that's crazy,” Sununu said. “That's not a good system.”
But Ragassa said the $26 million is only a fraction of what the employees are owed. He estimated that number at $150 million to $200 million, saying it could be spread out over 10 years to mitigate the financial impact.
“This lawsuit isn't about only the pension cuts,” he said. “It is about unjust practices.”
