A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Brian O’Neill: House Bill 135, long overdue, aims to keep Kentucky’s first responders in Kentucky


Statewide, employers large and small face challenges with recruiting and retaining talent, including our fire and police departments. While many of us feel a calling to be firefighters, we also care about the quality of life after our service.

For years, Kentucky has been losing quality first responders to surrounding states where they can receive a secure pension at the end of their careers. Fortunately, Representative Buddy Wheatley’s House Bill 135 aims to correct that issue for our first responders.

Currently, the Kentucky Employee Retirement System and the County Employee Retirement System offer hazardous duty employees hired after January 1, 2014, a cash-balance plan. The cash-balance plan is a 401(k)-style plan with the additional feature of guaranteeing at least a 4% return on investment.

According to the Kentucky Public Pensions Authority, a hazardous duty employee who began their career at 20 and put in 25 years of service would walk away with an estimated account balance of $225,929. While that seems like a large amount of money, it is not an adequate amount to carry someone through retirement.

With HB 135, we have the opportunity to ensure that those who answer the call to serve our communities as first responders can have security and dignity in retirement. HB 135 would allow those in hazardous duty positions within the Kentucky Employee Retirement System and the County Employee Retirement System to participate in Tier 2, which provides a secure, modest pension benefit instead of a 401(k)-style plan.

If we want to attract and keep the best people to serve as firefighters and other public safety positions, we need better benefits to entice them to join our departments and to stay in our communities. Passing HB 135 will put Kentucky on the right path to fairly compensating public employees for their service.

Brian O’Neill is a Louisville firefighter and President of Louisville Professional Firefighters Local 345


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4 Comments

  1. Sjohnson says:

    Does this affect non hazardous first responders ?

  2. Ronnie long says:

    What we retired members need is a decent cost of living increase on an annual basis. I haven’t had a raise in years!

  3. Dennis Frommeyer says:

    Current retirees need some kind of cost of living raise. I have been retired almost 11 years and have yet to have gotten one. Our legislators should be ashamed of themselves, especially considering their pension gets them. They shouldn’t even have a pension, they are part time volunteers.

  4. K. Dawson says:

    “If we want to attract and keep the best people to serve as firefighters and other public safety positions, we need better benefits to entice them to join our departments and to stay in our communities. Passing HB 135 will put Kentucky on the right path to fairly compensating public employees for their service.” I totally agree.

    ***The same is true for educators. If we want the best we need to offer retirement security with defined benefits, stop the constant bad press, not funnel money away from public schools to charter schools, increase funding for curricular materials, reinstate the requirements for Masters level degrees with increased salary steps, reinstate professional development money to allow teachers to continue to stay current on new technologies, etc. Our public schools prepare our future workforce. We need to invest in KY’s future!

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