The Georgia State Retirees Association, or GSRA, will hold a Statesboro outreach meeting at 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 10 in the second-floor community room at Synovus Bank, 2 East Main St., with goals of recruiting more members, forming a chapter here and educating current and prospective state retirees – especially those covered by the Employees Retirement System of Georgia – about their pensions and healthcare benefits.

To be clear, the GSRA is a different organization than the Georgia Retired Educators Association, or GREA, which has long had an active, local presence. The two largest retirement systems for people whose jobs are funded wholly or mainly by Georgia taxpayers are the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia, or TRS, and the Employee Retirement System of Georgia, ERSGA or just ERS for short. The ERS covers retirees of most non-educator agencies of the state government, such as the Departments of Natural Resources, Transportation, Labor and Corrections and the Division of Family and Children Services, among others.

The GSRA, founded in 2006, tends to draw members from retirees covered by the Employees Retirement System, especially by advocating improvement in ERS benefits to include an annual cost of living allowance, or COLA, which is built into the Teachers Retirement System but not into the ERS. However, the organization’s website, specifically the page www.mygsra.com/our-purpose , states that GSRA is a nonprofit organization advocating for Georgia “retired state employees and educators” and asserts that “retirees of state government, local school systems and the Board of Regents” have shared interests in pension benefits and health insurance.

“We do want to form a chapter of the Georgia State Retirees Association to give voice to the people in this area,” said Cynthia Arnsdorff, a GSRA member through the Savannah Coastal Chapter who is helping to publicize the outreach meeting.

A similar meeting was held last fall at Lyons in Toombs County, and the association is trying to extend its reach and add members throughout the Coastal Georgia area, she said.

The GSRA originated in efforts of some  state employees close to retirement to understand their changing benefits, and the continuing complexity and annual funding concerns remain reasons for shared efforts at understanding and advocacy, Arnsdorff said.

“It came about in 2006 because, I think, there were certain state employees who were close to retirement or recent retirees who realized that the pensions, perhaps as presented when they got hired, had gone through different changes through the years,” she said. “For instance, there are three prominent state plans for the Employees Retirement System.”

Back when the organization was founded there were already the ERS “old plan” and the “new plan,” but not yet “GSEPS,” which current employees are under, the Georgia State Employees Pension and Savings Plan.

“I think GSRA came about out of a recognition that not all employees fully understood what their pensions or their health care benefits might be in the future,” said Arnsdorff, a pension beneficiary whose husband worked for the Environmental Protection Division.

Falling behind

With the ERS board, Legislature and governors giving one-time “bonus” increases some years, retirees often did not realize how far their benefits had fallen behind the cost of living until inflation peaked at an annual rate of 8% a few years ago, she said. Looking back, cumulative inflation totaled roughly 40% since the circa 2008 “Great Recession.”

“So we’re just not keeping up with it. … But we’re very thankful that the governor this year saw fit to contribute a large amount, $500 million, to the overall fund to bring the level up higher, because most of the pension funds are not funded at 100% levels, but that’s true across the country,” said Arnsdorff. “Georgia is in better shape than a lot of other states.”

A “COLA History” document on the GSRA website tracks the funding of Employee Retirement System of Georgia cost of living allowances and other additions to the benefits every fiscal year from 2007, the year after the  association was founded, through 2023. “No COLAs granted” is the summary line repeated for every year for fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2016. Then followed a series of three 3% and one 2% “one-time adjustments” on the first $30,000 of annual pension benefit for fiscal years 2017 through 2020, but “no post-retirement benefit grants” for fiscal year 2021, two 3% “one-time adjustments ”for fiscal 2022 and a 1.5% COLA in fiscal 2023.

Lawmakers to attend

Two “special guests” confirming plans to attend the April 10 GSRA meeting, state Sen. Billy Hickman, R-4th District, Statesboro, and Rep. Lehman Franklin, R-District 160, Stilson and Statesboro, have just returned from the now completed 2024 Georgia General Assembly session.

In addition to the $500 million that Gov. Brian Kemp proposed with the fiscal year 2024 supplemental budget, which extends to June 30, the Legislature put about $27 million in the budget last year and another $27 million in the fiscal 2025 budget for the ERS pensions, Hickman said.

“But they had gone without COLA for about 10 years, and they’re just trying to get more organized where they can have a bigger voice. …,” he told the Statesboro Herald. “Teachers Retirement, TRS as they would call it, is a very active and a very vocal retirement system, and they have had COLAs. They get 3 percent every year. So this is just to try to get the state retirees more organized and more outspoken about their needs.”

Franklin said the plan is to put $500 million a year into the ERS system each year for the next three years, for a total of $1.5 billion in an effort “to catch that up, basically, to try to match the Teachers Retirement System.”

“It’s got a long way to go, though,” he said.

GSRA Savannah Coastal Chapter President Alan Hill, who has held that role since 2011, has served on the association’s Policy and Operations Board since 2012 and as its state secretary since 2022, plans to speak at the meeting here. Other scheduled speakers include Lorr Elias, GSRA Board member focusing on membership expansion; Laura Ryan, who retired from the Department of Juvenile Justice after 21 years following three years as a high school teacher in Liberty County; and local advocate for state retirees’ benefits Jimmie DeLoach, who retired as an administrative law judge with the Department of Labor. Dee Dee Redding, who retired after 34 years with Bulloch County DFCS, is expected to do the introductions.