Gov. Tim Kaine on Friday proposed spending nearly $14 million to strengthen police retirement packages and more than $8 million for corrections and juvenile officer salaries, part of a bundle of initiatives he will soon put before the Virginia General Assembly.
The boost to the retirement benefits would go to sheriffs’ departments and state police in the hopes of adding a new incentive in attracting and
retaining police personnel and making the agencies more competitive with their counterparts in other states.
“What it will do is certainly give us another tool, another benefit that we can boast when we’re recruiting folks,” Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty told The Examiner Friday.
Kaine’s proposal would change the formula by which a retiring officer’s benefit is calculated by upping the “compensation multiplier,” a factor
that, for Virginia State Police, ranks as one of the worst in the country, law enforcement officials say.
The benefit is determined by taking the average salary of an officer’s 36 highest-paid months and multiplying it by the number of years of service and the compensation multiplier, according to Flaherty.
The compensation multiplier would be changed from 1.7 percent to 1.85 percent under the governor’s plan.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Marshall Thielen, president of Fairfax County’s police union, which operates its own retirement system. “[State Police’s] retirement system is just horrible compared to what we have here in Fairfax County.”
A state senator plans to put forth a proposal that would bump the compensation multiplier for State Police to 2 percent and enable local police departments to raise the percentage as well, said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police. A similar venture died last year in an appropriations subcommittee, she said.
“We’ve had efforts in the past. The last two years have been the first effort that we have come together as a [group] of law enforcement
organizations to make this our major priority,” she said.
The governor is also proposing an $8.2 million salary increase for officers and supervisors in the Department of Corrections and Department of Juvenile Justice.
The 2007 regular session of the General Assembly will convene Wednesday.
