General – Page 4 – Firefly Admin Inc.

LOSAP LEGISLATIVE BILL UPDATE

May 12, 2020

As was mentioned in a previous post, a bill was introduced in the Senate to try and address the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic will have on the ability of volunteers to earn LOSAP points in 2020. Since that post, the bill was amended to include changes to Articles 11-AA and 11-AAA, which are…

BILL INTRODUCED TO ADDRESS LOSAP POINTS DURING PANDEMIC

May 2, 2020

A bill was introduced in the Senate this week to address how the current COVID-19 pandemic has impacted how firefighters can earn LOSAP points. At this point, we are providing the text of the bill with no comments. It can be found at the bottom of this article. In general, we maintain that we cannot…

PROFESSIONAL

December 31, 2019

What does it mean to be a professional? In many contexts, the term professional means paid, in particular in the sporting world. A professional athlete is paid, an amateur is not. Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) won the light heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Olympics as an amateur. In October of that same year, he…

DOES A VOLUNTEER HAVE TO BE ACTIVE ON 12/31 TO EARN SERVICE CREDIT?

September 3, 2019

A question came in about the following: A firefighter earned 50 points during the time he was an active member, but resigned before the end of the year. Should he be eligible to earn service credit and therefore a benefit? Before we address our opinion on this question, we need to be clear that this…

PROJECTED DC ACCOUNT BALANCES

July 30, 2019

In the last post, we settled on 4.5% as an assumed rate of return when projecting the DC account balances. However I decided it was just as easy to perform the calculations at 4.00%, 4.50% and 5.00%, therefore giving some more options. Below you will see two charts. The first chart assumes and Entitlement Age…

DB AND DC – AKA APPLES AND ORANGES

July 19, 2019

Trying to compare the DB and DC plans is exactly like the old saying of trying to compare apples to oranges. Just like fruit, part of the decision making process in selecting which type of plan is better comes down to preference and taste – not something that can be analyzed. But, the analysis is…

LOSAP STATUTE AMENDMENT PASSES SENATE & ASSEMBLY

June 21, 2019

Bill A 7552 / S 4207-A has passed the Assembly and Senate. This bill increases the Defined Contribution service award from $700 to $1,200. Now, we wait for the Governor to sign it into law. When the law was amended to increase the contribution from $480 to $700, the Governor had not signed the bill into…

TRACKING TWO BILLS TO AMEND THE STATUTE

June 19, 2019

We are tracking two bills that are being considered during the final days of the legislative session. The session was scheduled to end today (Wednesday 6/19) but there are indications that it may be extended to the end of the week. The first bill is A 7276 / S 5895, which would increase the maximum…

DC LOSAP ACCOUNTS – CAN PARTICIPANTS DIRECT INVESTMENTS?

May 22, 2019

The last topic we’ll address that stems from the fact that LOSAP assets are municipal assets and not participant assets is the idea of investment direction by the participant. Most are familiar with a typical 401(k), 457 or IRA account, where a menu of investment options are available for the participant to select. Some plans…

LOANS NOT AVAILABLE FROM LOSAP BENEFITS

May 21, 2019

We continue to look at the different ramifications of the fact that the assets reserved for LOSAP benefits are municipal assets and not firefighter assets. Given the last few discussions, this one may seem obvious, but a participant cannot take a loan against his/her LOSAP account balance either. This is an easy answer first because…

Category: General