![\"Ayotte-Backed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Group-II-lawsuit-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Seifu
\nRagassa, President of the NH Group II Retirement Coalition,
\nspeaks with attorney William Woodbury following Wednesday’s hearing in Merrimack Superior Court.<\/p>\n
One of Gov. Kelly Ayotte\u2019s first signature budget wins \u2014 increasing the pension payments for firefighters, police officers, and corrections workers \u2014 isn\u2019t enough to stop disgruntled state workers from suing.<\/p>\n
William Woodbury, representing several state and municipal employees in the Group II retirement pool, said Ayotte\u2019s recent reforms don\u2019t fix the fundamental problem: The system should never have been changed in 2011, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis [lawsuit] is to show those reforms were unconstitutional, and none of the reforms since then have made these plaintiffs whole,\u201d Woodbury said this week during a hearing in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord.<\/p>\n
Police officers, firefighters, and corrections employees, who are all part of the Group II pool, have been fighting to restore their pension benefits since the legislature changed the plan in 2011. At the time, a serious fix was needed to keep the New Hampshire Retirement System from fiscal disaster. The 2011 legislative fix took away benefits from Group II employees who were hired before 2011, but had not yet been vested with 10 years of service before 2012.<\/p>\n
The result, according to the lawsuit, is an unconstitutional, retroactive law that forces employees to work years past their 20-year retirement date in stressful and dangerous positions, and still see the retirement benefits they were promised before the 2011 change cut by tens of thousands of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since the reforms, critics of the move say New Hampshire has experienced a first responder staffing crisis. They claim the state\u2019s pension system is often cited as a factor in candidates going somewhere else. According to WMUR in 2024, New Hampshire State Police are down more than 60 officers, Manchester Police are down 24, and Rochester is down 11. The New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) had a 52 percent vacancy rate in its entry-level jobs. Under the 2011 changes, DOC staff had to work 25 years for full retirement instead of 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Supporters of the changes say Americans simply don\u2019t hold jobs as long as they used to, and employees are pulled away by higher pay and better work options today, not potential retirement payouts in the future.<\/p>\n
Ayotte\u2019s budget showdown with her fellow Republicans in the legislature was over their disagreement on the Group II pension issue. There are about 1,500 employees in the Group II plan retroactively impacted by the 2011 change, and Ayotte campaigned on a promise to make them whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Drew Cline, president of the\u00a0 Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, said Ayotte\u2019s budget fight ended with a big win for her and the Group II employees. They didn\u2019t get everything, but they came close, he said. New Hampshire\u2019s pension system is underfunded, but in a much better position since the 2011 changes. Pushing benefits higher risks going back to unfunded mandates that ultimately burden taxpayers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to go backwards,\u201d Cline said.<\/p>\n
The budget deal Ayotte got is appreciated, said Seifu Ragassa, President of the NH Group II Retirement Coalition, but it doesn\u2019t completely close the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NH Group II Retirement Coalition and its members are grateful to Gov. Ayotte and the legislators who supported her efforts to support our members and address the challenges faced by first responders over the past 14 years,\u201d Ragassa said. \u201cHowever, the fight to restore the benefits that were unjustly taken from first responders is far from over. We will continue to advocate until all benefits are fully restored\u2014nothing more, nothing less.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seifu Ragassa, President of the NH Group II Retirement Coalition, speaks with attorney William Woodbury following Wednesday’s hearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,5719,5723,5721,5720,5722,147,530,1583,1666],"class_list":["post-5254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-department-of-corrections","tag-firefighters","tag-gov-kelly-ayotte","tag-merrimack-superior-court","tag-pensions","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-police","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}