MPERS Legislative Update

June 2, 2026

Three bills affecting MPERS passed this session, and a fourth stalled. The three that passed are now before the Governor and are not yet law.

Why it matters: A fallen officer's survivor protection depends on the officer having been enrolled and the contributions collected. When a town fails to do that, the family can be left fighting to prove what they are owed at the worst possible moment. HB 45 takes real steps to protect officers and their families; HB 1082 and HB 1237 weaken the tools that make that protection work — and shift the cost onto the towns that follow the law.

HB 45 is the most significant improvement to officers' benefits in years.

For more than a decade, officers doing the same job, taking the same risks, and wearing the same badge could earn different pensions for no reason other than hire date. HB 45 closes that gap going forward. For service earned on or after January 1, 2027, the accrual rate rises to 3⅓% for members of the hazardous duty subplan and to 3% for members of the nonhazardous duty subplan. That ends the post-2012 disparity for hazardous duty officers and brings the nonhazardous rate in line with what other municipal employees generally already earn. These changes take effect only if HB 45 becomes law.

HB 45 also addresses survivor protection directly. When an employer failed to enroll an officer who was then killed in the line of duty, the family may discover the failure only when they go to claim protection the employer never properly put in place. HB 45 creates a survivor remedy for families of officers killed in the line of duty on or after July 1, 2010, and before March 1, 2026, when the officer's employer failed to enroll the officer; eligible families must apply by June 30, 2027. It does not undo the loss. It restores the protection those families should have had.

HB 45 also improves how future cost-of-living adjustments are funded. It strengthens the mechanism behind a dedicated account that, by law, can be used for one purpose only: funding future COLAs. As the required employer rate falls, HB 45 allows part of that reduction to be directed into the account rather than taken entirely as rate relief — building, over time, the funding future COLAs depend on.

HB 45 makes several other changes as well. It attempts to exclude nonrecurring lump-sum payments and ad hoc bonuses from earnable compensation, lets members purchase credit for prior federal and out-of-state law enforcement service, allows DROP balances to be invested at the system's rate of return, and adds a lump-sum retirement option for certain long-serving post-DROP members.

HB 45 was authored by Representative Bacala at MPERS' request.

Why enrollment and collection matter to survivor protection:

The survivor protections in HB 45 — and the line-of-duty death and disability protections MPERS administers generally — depend on one administrative precondition: the officer must actually be enrolled, and the employer's contributions must actually be collected.

Survivor protection depends on administration. An employer's failure to enroll an officer or remit contributions does not extinguish what the officer and family are owed — but it can delay it, force litigation to establish it, and leave a family fighting to prove a benefit at the worst possible moment. The protection should be in place and funded before it is ever needed, not reconstructed through a lawsuit after a death.

Prompt enrollment and reliable collection are not bureaucratic housekeeping. They are the operational prerequisite for the survivor protections the system exists to deliver. That is why these bills matter.

The membership-termination affidavit and a federal tax-qualification concern:

Nearly every enrollment and collection dispute traces to one mechanism: the membership-termination affidavit. When an eligible officer starts work, that officer becomes a member of MPERS by law. For officers of a limited group of employers — those that voluntarily covered their police employees under Social Security before MPERS was created with mandatory membership on July 1, 1973 — a properly and timely filed affidavit can terminate that membership, letting the officer give up retirement, disability, and survivor protection while still serving as a police officer. Among Louisiana's statewide retirement systems, MPERS is effectively alone in carrying this legacy termination mechanism, and effectively alone in the enrollment and collection disputes it produces.

This is not only a benefits problem. It is also a federal tax problem. MPERS is a tax-qualified retirement plan — meaning the IRS grants it favorable tax treatment that members and employers rely on, in exchange for following federal rules about who is a member and how membership works. The affidavit predates that status: it was lawful when created, and became a problem only when qualification brought federal rules it does not fit. Officers moving in and out of membership outside those rules — especially late or retroactive terminations — create federal tax-compliance concerns for the plan's qualified status.

During the session, MPERS proposed resolving this at the source: end the affidavit, resolve pending disputes, forgo future litigation in favor of administrative collection through Treasury certification, and preserve line-of-duty death and disability protection for every eligible officer. The proposal included a path for officers who were wrongly left out — through no fault of their own — to receive the service credit they earned, without their municipality facing a crushing bill to make it right.

That proposal was not adopted. The affidavit remains, the disputes it causes continue, and the bills that did pass make collection slower and costlier rather than resolving the underlying problem.

The number of employers involved is limited, but the consequence is not. The affidavit creates fiduciary and federal tax exposure for the entire system and its members, regardless of how few employers it touches. This is the Legislature's to resolve — but resolving it means closing the affidavit gap so that officers stay covered, not cutting those officers loose to make the problem disappear, which would strip protection from the very officers the system exists to serve. Until the Legislature acts, MPERS must administer the statute in a way that complies with federal law.

HB 1237 and the Legislative Auditor's findings:

HB 1237 was authored by Representative Bacala and supported by the Louisiana Municipal Association (LMA). MPERS supported an earlier form of the bill as a trade: eliminate the affidavit in exchange for giving up partial dissolution liability. The version that passed kept the partial dissolution concession but dropped the affidavit fix.

Through the amendment process, the Legislature also stripped out the Treasury-certification mechanism — a tool that other systems have and MPERS asked to keep, which let it recover delinquent contributions without a lawsuit, and the one MPERS had proposed relying on instead of litigation. Removing it leaves litigation as the only path to compliance — more court action, not less.

And collection is not abstract: MPERS cannot finalize an officer's retirement until the employer's final reporting and remittance are complete, so when a town stops paying, its officers cannot retire and begin drawing benefits.

MPERS had to oppose the amended bill once Treasury certification was stripped away. A retirement benefit is only as secure as the system’s ability to collect the contributions funding it; the Board’s fiduciary duty to its members permitted no other course.

On the financial effect, the analysis is not MPERS's alone. The Legislative Auditor's actuarial note found that:


• Eliminating partial dissolution liability shifts costs from one participating employer to another.
• Removing Treasury certification may make delinquent payments harder to recover, possibly increasing costs for other participating employers.



The auditor's language is measured; MPERS's experience is more direct. The cost shifts from any employer whose active membership falls below the statutory threshold — the largest employer and smaller employers alike — onto everyone whose membership remains relatively stable. And removing certification will — not may — make delinquent contributions harder to recover, with the cost falling on compliant employers and the risk falling on the officers and survivors those contributions protect.

HB 1082 and the venue change:

HB 1082 was authored by Representative DeWitt and supported by the LMA. Under current law, actions involving Louisiana's statewide retirement systems are generally handled in one centralized venue. HB 1082 applies a different rule to MPERS alone: when MPERS sues to enforce enrollment or collect contributions, it must file where "the cause of action arises," a standard the bill does not define. No other statewide retirement system was singled out this way — and MPERS had already offered to end the affidavit and resolve every pending dispute, which would have made these suits unnecessary.

The practical consequence is procedural cost. An undefined venue standard invites a threshold dispute over where each case belongs, before the merits of what an employer owes are ever reached. Over the past four years, municipalities resisting these suits have spent roughly $1 million litigating MPERS cases, much of it on venue. HB 1082 does not resolve that question; it adds it to future cases. A comparable venue bill two years ago carried a fiscal note of roughly $345,000 a year; HB 1082 passed without one.



A venue rule does not weaken MPERS; it will pursue these cases wherever the law requires. The cost of slower collection falls on compliant employers, and every delay postpones the funding that officers' benefits and survivor protections depend on. 

HB 31 stalled — but the issue will return.

HB 31, by Representative Echols, would have let certain small municipalities stop enrolling future officers in MPERS. The budget strain behind that proposal is real, but opting out does not erase a municipality's share of the debt — it leaves that share for the municipalities that stay. HB 31 passed the House but was never heard in the Senate before the session ended. The issue has not gone away, and MPERS expects it back.

Substantial relief is coming — but it is years away.

The employer contribution rate drops to 29.35% this July — a decrease of more than 4%, and the lowest rate for the system in over a decade. That relief reflects strong fund performance.

But the larger relief is years off: most of the rate is debt service on a 2014 obligation with about eight years left. Compliant municipalities are eight years from the finish line. The partial dissolution and certification changes in HB 1237 are permanent. By contrast, ending the affidavit would lower the rate over time by broadening the payroll that carries the fixed debt. Keeping the affidavit is not the cheaper course. It preserves the disputes and tax issues, narrows the payroll base, and leaves officers exposed.

What comes next.

These bills differ on their face — venue, partial dissolution, certification, municipal opt-out — but they share a common effect: cost moves toward the employers that enroll their officers, report payroll, and pay on time. If the Legislature intends to relieve some municipalities of obligations they owe, it can do so directly — and say who absorbs the difference — rather than through changes that quietly reduce collection and shift the cost to compliant employers and the risk to officers and their families.

MPERS will begin that work immediately, with the LMA, municipal officials, and other stakeholders. The solution must eliminate the affidavit process through an economically viable framework, protect the system's federal tax-qualified status, make participation workable for affidavit municipalities, and resolve these disputes at the source — and MPERS will bring it to the Legislature.

The legislators who delivered HB 45 showed what is possible when the goal is protecting officers. That is the work MPERS hopes to continue.



The goal does not change: protect police officers and surviving families, administer the law faithfully, and treat every employer fairly.

MPERS thanks Representative Bacala, who authored HB 45 at MPERS's request; Representative Freeman, who co-authored; the House and Senate Retirement Committees; and every legislator who supported improved benefits for officers and their families.