OCEAN CITY – Resort officials this week agreed to adopt changes to the public safety employee pension plan.
On Monday, the Ocean City Council voted unanimously to adopt changes to the town’s pension plans for public safety employees. The changes will allow public safety employees to purchase service credit.
“This is to allow for the purchase of service credit at the full actuarial cost but to limit the service that can be purchased to no more than five years,” said City Solicitor Heather Stansbury.
Last month, City Manager Terry McGean told councilmembers the fire department had recently hired an employee who has sought to transfer years of service from their previous employer in Baltimore City to the Town of Ocean City. To that end, he presented two ordinances that would allow both public safety and general employees to buy pension years.
“By leaving Baltimore City and coming to Ocean City, he was losing time in his pension from Baltimore City,” he told the council in July. “We were approached as to whether he could purchase that additional time, make up that difference, essentially by contributing additional money into the Ocean City pension.”
Officials told the council last month the pension plan amendments would apply to both public safety and general employees. It also allowed employees who would like to retire early and receive a full pension amount to purchase up to five years of service credit at full actuarial cost.
After further discussion, however, the council agreed to strike the option for purchasing service credits on the back end, or at the end of an employee’s service to the town, and to advance both ordinances to a second reading.
Back on the agenda Monday, Stansbury said the ordinance amending the pension plan for general employees had been pulled.
“The ordinance was amended on July 17 to strike the purchase of service credit for periods of no performance,” she explained. “Commonly, we refer to that as the back end. But once we struck that, there was no reason for it to be in existence because of the general employees now not being part of the pension plan.”
McGean told the council this week that the general employee pension plan was now closed to new hires.
“So there’s no way for somebody to come from another agency and attempt to purchase pension time in the general employees pension plan,” he added. “You are not eligible for it to begin with. So once the back end, which was the ability to essentially purchase early retirement, was struck, the issue became null and void for the general employees.”
The council, however, voted 6-0, with Councilman Will Savage absent, to approve changes to the public safety employee pension plan on second reading.
