One of the governor's vetoes killed legislation that would have put several state employees into the "elected class" for retiree benefits, including the two House parliamentarians who quit in the last week of the session in a dispute over challenges to Speaker Tom Craddick.
That group included former House Parliamentarian Denise Davis and her deputy, Chris Griesel, who quit in the last week of the session when Craddick ignored their advice about whether he had to allow his colleagues to try to remove him from office. Craddick taking advice from others he'd been conferring with decided he didn't have to recognize members for so-called "motions to vacate the chair" and that his refusal to ignore them could not be appealed.
The beneficiaries of the vetoed bill would also have included Senate Parliamentarian Karina Davis and Laura Medlock, who ran the Speaker's kitchen before being forced out of that job late last year.
The legislation — HB 3609 by Rep. Robert Talton, R-Sugar Land, and Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston — would have put several people into the elected class for state retirement. That would have elevated them from the regular pensions for state employees into the potentially more lucrative category legislators set up for themselves and other elected officials.
It was originally written for Medlock, after House members complained about the way she was terminated late last year. She worked 14 years for the state, retired, then returned to work for almost two decades. Because of that retirement in the middle, she wasn't eligible for additional retirement benefits and didn't contribute to the retirement system during her second stint. The bill would have allowed her to buy into the system for those years, and would have let her do it by deducting from her state retirement for the buyback instead of forcing her to catch up on the payments first. How she would have fared depends on who's talking. One bunch of experts tells us her benefits would have been in the regular employee class, not the elected class. Another bunch says the bill was written in a way that would allow her into the elected class.
The other three legislative employees were added as the bill worked its way through the Senate and the House.
The bill would admitted the group into a small number of legislative employees who already won elected official benefits. To qualify, they have to have held two titled jobs as officers of the House or Senate for a total of ten years, and they have to have worked for the state for a total of 20 years. To make employees eligible, they had to have their names and titles recorded in the House or Senate Journals; Craddick did that for Medlock, Denise Davis, and Griesel, while Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst did it for Karina Davis. Both chambers passed the bill with no dissent, but Perry spiked it.
Perrys' veto message: "House Bill No. 3609 would entitle a select group of state employees to receive special retirement benefits which other state employees will not have the opportunity to receive. State law governing retirement benefits requires a state employee to work for a certain number of years while contributing to the pension trust fund in order to establish the requisite amount of service credit to receive retirement benefits. House Bill No. 3609 would allow a select few to receive increased benefits without meeting established state requirements."
Perry signed a bill two years ago that did the same thing for some people, notably
Nancy Fisher, Craddick's chief of staff. Her name and titles were put into the journal that year just minutes before the Legislature adjourned Sine Die. A spokesman for Perry said that one got by because it was part of an omnibus retirement bill that had to pass. The bill this session didn't have the same importance.