Senate Bill No. 119
(By Senator Hunter)
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[Introduced January 11, 2006; referred to the Committee
on Pensions; and then to the Committee on Finance.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §18-7A-25 of the Code of West Virginia,
1931, as amended, relating to the State Teachers Retirement
System; and allowing eligibility for retirement, with full
pension rights, when a member's age plus years of contributing
service equals or exceeds eighty.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §18-7A-25 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended,
be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 7A. STATE TEACHERS RETIREMENT SYSTEM.
§18-7A-25. Eligibility for retirement allowance.
(a) Any member who has attained the age of sixty years or who
has had thirty-five years of total service as a teacher in West
Virginia, regardless of age, is eligible for an annuity. No new
entrant nor present member is eligible for an annuity, however, if
either has less than five years of service to his or her credit.
(b) Any member who has attained the age of fifty-five years
and who has served thirty years as a teacher in West Virginia is
eligible for an annuity.
(c) Any member who has served at least thirty but less than
thirty-five years as a teacher or nonteaching member in West
Virginia and is less than fifty-five years of age is eligible for
an annuity, but the annuity shall be the reduced actuarial
equivalent of the annuity the member would have received if the
member were age fifty-five at the time such annuity was applied
for.
(b) Any member may retire with full pension rights, without
reduction of benefits, when the sum of the member's age plus total
years of service equals or exceeds eighty: Provided, That ten
years of the member's total years of service may be out-of-state
service or prior service or any combination thereof not exceeding
an aggregate of ten years.
(d) (c) The request for any annuity shall be made by the
member in writing to the Retirement Board, but in case of
retirement for disability, the written request may be made by
either the member or the employer.
(e) (d) A member is eligible for annuity for disability if he
or she satisfies the conditions in either subdivision (a) or
subdivision (b) of this section and meets the conditions of
subdivision (c) of this section as follows:
(1) His or her service as a teacher or nonteaching member in
West Virginia must total at least ten years, and service as a
teacher or nonteaching member must have been terminated because of
disability, which disability must have caused absence from service
for at least six months before his or her application for
disability annuity is approved.
(2) His or her service as a teacher or nonteaching member in
West Virginia must total at least five years, and service as a
teacher or nonteaching member must have been terminated because of
disability, which disability must have caused absence from service
for at least six months before his or her application for
disability annuity is approved and the disability is a direct and
total result of an act of student violence directed toward the
member.
(3) An examination by a physician or physicians selected by
the Retirement Board must show that the member is at the time
mentally or physically incapacitated for service as a teacher, that
for that service the disability is total and likely to be
permanent, and that he or she should be retired in consequence of
the disability.
(f) Continuance of the disability of the retired member shall
be established by medical examination, as prescribed in subdivision
(3), subsection (1) of this section, annually for five years after
retirement, and thereafter at such after that at times required by the Retirement Board. Effective the first day of July, one
thousand nine hundred ninety-eight, a member who has retired
because of a disability may select an option of payment under the
provisions of section twenty-eight of this article:
Provided, That
any option selected under the provisions of section twenty-eight of
this article shall be in all respects the actuarial equivalent of
the straight life annuity benefit the disability retiree receives
or would receive if the options under section twenty-eight of this
article were not available and that no beneficiary or beneficiaries
of the disability annuitant may receive a greater benefit, nor
receive any benefit for a greater length of time, than the
beneficiary or beneficiaries would have received had the disability
retiree not made any election of the options available under said
section twenty-eight. In determining the actuarial equivalence,
the board shall take into account the life expectancies of the
member and the beneficiary:
Provided, however, That the life
expectancies may at the discretion of the board be established by
an underwriting medical director of a competent insurance company
offering annuities. Payment of the disability annuity provided in
this article shall cease immediately if the Retirement Board finds
that the disability of the retired teacher no longer exists, or if
the retired teacher refuses to submit to medical examination as
required by this section.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to provide teacher retirement
eligibility, with full pension rights, when a member's age plus
years of total service equals or exceeds eighty.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added.