HBA-GUM, GUM H.B. 3150 76(R) BILL ANALYSIS Office of House Bill AnalysisH.B. 3150 By: West, George Pensions & Investments 4/12/1999 Introduced BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Under current law, retiring teachers have the option to purchase service credit for one year towards retirement if they accumulate 50 days of state sick or personal leave and retire after September 1, 2001. A number of school districts deduct a teacher's time off from accumulated state days before district sick or personal days. Local days are used only after all accumulated state days from the current and previous years have been used. Consequently, if a teacher is out of school for an extended period of time late in his or her career, accumulated state days may be diminished so greatly that the opportunity to purchase service credit towards retirement is lost. H.B. 3150 authorizes a teacher who has accumulated 10 days or 80 hours of unused state personal or sick leave to reserve that leave with the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) for potential service credit in July of each year. This bill requires that a teacher exhaust the personal sick leave accumulated under the teacher's employer before using accumulated state leave. This bill also requires TRS to adopt rules relating to accumulated leave, and provides that state personal or sick leave is not required to be reserved to receive service credit under Section 823.403 (Credit for Accumulated Personal or Sick Leave). RULEMAKING AUTHORITY It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that rulemaking authority is expressly delegated to the Teacher Retirement System in SECTION 1 (Section 823.4031, Government Code) of this bill. SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS SECTION 1. Amends Subchapter E, Chapter 823, Government Code, by adding Section 823.4031, as follows: Sec. 823.4031. RESERVATION OF ACCUMULATED PERSONAL OR SICK LEAVE. (a) Provides that a member who has accumulated 10 days or 80 hours of unused state personal or sick leave may reserve that leave with the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) for potential service credit under Section 823.403 (Credit for Accumulated Personal or Sick Leave). Requires that leave be reserved only in increments of 10 days or 80 hours and only in July of each year. (b) Requires that a member exhaust the combined, current, unused, and unreserved personal or sick leave from the member's employer before taking leave reserved under this section. Provides that leave reserved under this section, which is not used to receive service credit under Section 823.403 and not taken by member, is considered refunded at the time of termination of employment and is subject to applicable personnel policies regarding payment or transfer of the leave. (c) Requires TRS to adopt rules relating to leave under this section. (d) Provides that state personal or sick leave is not required to be reserved under this section in order to receive service credit under Section 823.403. SECTION 2. Emergency clause. Effective date: upon passage.