Chapter 116, Acts of 2002, which was signed into law by Acting Governor Swift six days after being enacted by the House and Senate, allows cities, towns and counties to give an extra five years service time or age credit to eligible employees who agree to retire.With local budgets fiscally strapped and cutbacks in state aid a certainty, communities such as Haverhill, Quincy, Weymouth, Lynn and Melrose, among others, were already facing layoffs.

Chapter 116 is home rule legislation, which local governing bodies have the option of accepting. In a city, for example, the mayor and city council are the accepting bodies. In a town, the selectmen and town meeting accept. However, if a town meeting doesn't act by this June 30, the ball is then totally in the hands of the selectmen for acceptance.

Once accepted, the local executive authority (mayor, selectmen, etc.) is responsible for implementing the law. They can allow less than five years in age or service credit if they so choose. They can also limit the number of early retirements in total and set further limits within group classifications. Seniority will prevail within such limits.

The executive authority can also set retirement dates, which can be no later than December 30, 2002. Employees of city and town retirement boards cannot retire under the ERI law until 30 days after the set date. The ERI retirement date for employees of county or regional retirement boards is January 30, 2003.

Under the state's five-year ERI, 1,319 state college teachers will be retiring this June 15. This will bring the state's total number of ERI retirements this year to 4,859. This number is well short of the 7,000 limit, but greater than the 4,200 that retired under the state's first ERI 10 years ago. At that time, college teachers were not included in the enabling legislation.

The bill allowing this year's state ERI was filed last November 19 by Acting Governor Jane Swift. Senator Brian Joyce and Representative Brian Dempsey, the co-chairmen of the Legislature's Public Service Committee, held public hearings and fine-tuned the bill, which was ultimately passed as Chapter 219, Acts of '01.

Subsequently, Senator Joyce was elevated to the assistant chairmanship of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Senate President Thomas Birmingham then named Senator Harriette Chandler as Senate Chairman of Public Service.

Dempsey and Chandler, along with their very capable staff members, went to work drafting the local government ERI legislation.

The major differences between the state and local ERIs are that the state did not include public safety employees while the local did include public safety, and the state was for a flat five years extra credit while the local can be for a lesser number of years. Public safety could not be included at the state level because of the 20% job backfill provision.

"There was great pressure on Representative Dempsey and Senators Joyce and Chandler to develop the state and local ERI legislation in a very short period of time," said Association President Ralph White. "They then had to shepherd the legislation through their respective branches, while the clock on layoffs was ticking. These co-chairmen of the Public Service Committee and their staffs did a great job under very trying conditions."