ATPE lobbyist Monty Exter attended a TRS Board meeting in Austin today. Today’s meeting was rescheduled from last week when it had to be delayed due to Hurricane Harvey. The agenda and board materials for the meeting can be found on the TRS website.

After preliminary housekeeping issues, the board took public comments. TRTA Executive Director Tim Lee engaged the board on the implementation and issues needing to be addressed due to recent legislation which made significant changes to TRS-Care.

After Mr. Lee, multiple industry professionals came to give their comments on TRS’s proposed rule change regarding 403(b) programs. All but one of those offering comments had strong concerns about the effect of the rules on the future availability of a robust cohort of providers for educators to choose. One witness thought the number of companies and products currently in the space was excessive and presented Texas educators with an overly complex and excessively expensive set of options. The board will further consider these rules during an agenda item later today on which we will report afterward for Teach the Vote.

After public comments, the board recognized Howard Goldman for his 24 years of service as TRS Communications Director.

Next the board received an update on the TEAM program. TEAM is the name given to TRS’s work toward updating the agency’s considerable computer infrastructures and data systems. Go live on phase one of the TEAM upgrades is set for October 2, 2017. There are some contingencies based on delays caused by Hurricane Harvey, as the storm may affect as many as 321,705 TRS members.

After the TEAM discussion, Brian Guthrie, TRS Executive Director, gave the board a special session update, including reporting on the passage of House Bill (HB) 21, which included an appropriation of $212 million for TRS-Care. The money appropriated will be used to soften the blow of the increased premiums and deductibles. The board returned to the issue of TRS-Care when it reviewed and adopted the premiums and plan design for TRS-Care, the retiree health benefits program, including the standard plan, the fully insured Medicare Advantage Plans, and the Medicare Part D Plans.

The attached document from TRS staff provides details of the now adopted TRS-Care plan design, how the new plan compares to the current TRS-Care plans, and what the plan would have looked like had HB 21 not passed during the special session. Changes to TRS-Care will not go into effect until Jan 1, 2018.

Following Guthrie’s comments, the board took up the certification of the contributions TRS will receive to fund TRS-ActiveCare. The board voted to certify to the State Comptroller the estimated amount of state contributions to be received by TRS-Active Care for fiscal year 2018. The certification amount totals $795,729,797 which includes $401,129,797 to meet the state contribution rate; $182,600,000 in supplemental funding passed during the regular session; and $212 million passed during the special session via HB 21. The state contribution rate has increased from 1.0% to 1.25% due to the passage of HB 3976 relating to changes for TRS-Care during the regular legislative session earlier this year.

TRS had initially scheduled a Policy Committee meeting to happen concurrently with today’s full board meeting, but that meeting had to be canceled as a result of a lack of quorum of those committee members due to Hurricane Harvey.

Proposed TRS meeting dates for 2018 are Feb. 14-16, April 19-20, June 14-15, July 27, Sept. 20-21, Oct 19, and Dec 13-14

The Board’s next regularly scheduled meeting will be September 21-22.