Pension Note (Government Forecasting & Accountability)
SB 1454, as engrossed, is the identical to SB 1454, as amended by SA 1. SB 1454, as amended by SA 1, achieves the same underlying goal as the original SB 1454. Though, instead of amending the individual articles of the Illinois Pension Code, the Illinois Municipal Code is amended to mandate automatic enrollment for employees of cities with a population of 500,000 or more (Chicago) that participate in the Chicago Fire, Police and Municipal pension funds. SB 1454 automatically enrolls newly hired participants in the Chicago Fire, Police and Municipal funds into a qualified pre-tax defined contribution (DC) retirement plan that would operate alongside the existing defined benefit (DB) plans of the respective funds. The number of new entrants who would be auto-enrolled into the newly created DC plans is not known. Some context is available via P.A. 102-540, which mandated automatic DC enrollment of new hires in both TRS and SURS. SURS reported that 77% of new hires remained in their DC plan after the enrollment window, while TRS reported that 73% of new hires remained in their Supplemental Savings Plan (SSP).