Retirement Bill – We Need Your Help!

Today was a momentous day for Telecommunicators across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and I wanted to provide each of you with an update. Today, the Joint Committee on Public Service heard several bills pertaining to retirement group classification. The first bill to be heard by the committee was H.2366, ‘An Act Relative to Massachusetts Certified Emergency Telecommunicators’. This bill would allow for certified telecommunicators in the Commonwealth to retire under Group 2 rather than Group 1. We were introduced by Representative Michael Soter, who spoke very passionately of the bill, and allowed the MCSA President and Vice President the opportunity to speak as well. The committee was very receptive to our comments; however, this is not where we halt. We have been asked by Representative Soter to provide written testimony in support of the bill. This is where each of you can help!

We urge each of you to write something about your experiences as a telecommunicator and how important this bill is to you. You may make it as personal or non-personal as you would like. Representative Soter would like to submit this testimony on our behalf next Monday 11/18/2019. I understand this may be short notice for some of you but I ask that you take some time to write testimony in support of the bill and submit it to us to include in our submission to Representative Soter. Please email your testimony to president@ma911.org by Sunday, 11/17/2019 to be included. We will provide Representative Soter one large document including all testimony provided so he may forward it to the Committee for review. If you can do so, please take some time out of your busy day to help us with this next step. Each story will help us convince the committee of the importance of this bill.

Should you have any questions at all, please reach out to me at anytime.

Be Safe,

Charles R. Goodwin

President

Submit testimony to: president@ma911.org

The below message was originally published on 11/1/2019.

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At the start of the year, two bills were filed in the House and Senate, respectively. H.2366 and S.1529 were filed to support the change of Certified 911 Telecommunicators retirement, moving those Certified Telecommunicators from Retirement Group 1 to Retirement Group 2. Both bills were referred to the Joint Committee on Public Service for first reading. The Joint committee has set November 12, 2019, from 10:00am to 1:00pm as the date and time for this reading. We are looking for your help to support this!

You may be asking what you can do….

1.   Contact your local Representatives and Senators and ask them to support this bill. This is especially true if they have co-sponsored the current bills as they may offer testimony during this hearing, so reach out to them and ask them for their continued support and to provide testimony.

2.   Join us at the State House on November 12, 2019 to show support. We want the Joint Committee on Public Service to see how much we care about this so the more telecommunicators there, the better!

If you are interested in learning more about these bills and who has co-sponsored them, please take a look at the Legislative Profile we have created on this bill by clicking below. Also, please share this information with your fellow telecommunicators!

Thank You all for the hard work you do each day!

Regards,

Charles Goodwin

President

Christopher Campbell

Immediate Past-President

Chairman, Legislative Committee