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Maine Advances Secure Choice Bill


Legislation advanced to the Maine State Senate on August 4 to establish a public-private partnership program to establish workplace automatic retirement savings accounts for private sector workers who currently lack such options.


 

Maine Advances Secure Choice Bill


Legislation advanced to the Maine State Senate on August 4 to establish a public-private partnership program to establish workplace automatic retirement savings accounts for private sector workers who currently lack such options.

The bill, LD 594, was introduced 18 months earlier, in February 2019, by State Senator Eloise Vitelli. It would create a seven-person Maine Retirement Savings Board within the Office of the Treasurer of State, which would then conduct a market and legal analysis for the program. The bill had been under consideration by the Senate Committee on Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services, which held hearings last year.

If Maine were to enact enabling legislation, it would join a growing list of states and municipalities that have created private-sector retirement savings programs inspired by the Secure Choice model that NCPERS unveiled in 2011.

LD 594 would apply to all employers that don't offer workers a federally qualified retirement plan. It would require those employers to give workers the opportunity to contribute to a state-sponsored plan through payroll deduction.

The legislation outlines the program requirements, but would leave matters such as minimum or default contribution amounts up to the proposed retirement savings board. It would, to the extent possible, require the state to “use existing employer and public infrastructure to facilitate contributions to the plan, record keeping and outreach.”


   

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