1976-08-02 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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• • The following resolution was unanimously adopted by 2900 delegates • representing, all 50 States at the annual conference of the ,Municipal Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada held on May 5, 1976, in San Francisco, California: RESOLUTION WHEREAS, the Employees' Retirement Income Security Act of 1.974 for a Congressional study of. public retirement plans with recommenda- tions to be made by December 31, 1976, and WHEREAS, the Municipal Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, top;ether with other national organizations comprised of public employees and their retirement plans, were re- quested and offered to provide input in the study through supplying statistical and other information relative to public plans to Congress in its effort to develop recommendations, and TvJHEREAS, HR 9155 was introduced as a skeleton bill in order to have a "vehicle" for hearings on the matters covered under ERISA, which hearings were in fact held and at which many public employee groups and other state and local government officials and organizations testified, and • WHEREAS, HR. 13040 was introduced on April 5, 1976, without notifying the groups that had been working with Congress, without completion of the agreed-upon study, without including the Federal public employees, without consideration of the cost to public retire- ment plans as compared to any value that might be received, and without any substantial experience derived from the problems that confronted private plans under ERISA. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the Municipal Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada hereby vigorously opposes the adoption of HR 13040 at this time and in the form as drafted because of inconclusive evidence of the need for such legislation, because of discrimination in not covering federal employees as well as state and local employees, because of total lack of concern as to the legality of infringing on the state and local governments rights to maintain and control their own retirement plans, and because of the premature introduction of. federal law for the regula- tion of state and local employee retirement systems prior to completion of the Congressional study mandated by the 1974 ERISA legislation. BE IT FURTHEP. RESOLVED, that the Municipal Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada hereby requests an opportunity to testify at the appropriate committee hearings to be set on HP. 13040 and encourages all other concerned public employee retirement organizations also to seek an opportunity to testify in • opposition to said bill.