The Grovetown City Council has taken a major step towards ensuring police officers in the city, as well as throughout the state, get retirement benefits.
Among the items on the agenda for the council’s meeting, Monday night, was a resolution to create a state retirement system for all law enforcement officers in Georgia. Latest in a campaign by police chief Jamie Kitchens
Georgia does not currently such a system in place, which means if a law enforcement officer employed by one county—the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, for example—were to transfer to another, say Columbia or Burke County, the years employed at their initial place of employment would not count towards that officer’s retirement.
This contrasts with every other state that borders Georgia, all of which have had statewide law enforcement 25-year retirement systems in place for decades. Alabama’s police retirement system was implemented in 1945, South Carolina in 1952, and both Tennessee and Florida launched their respective pension systems in the 1970s.
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“This is not a battle that’s just cropped up in the past six months,” said Grovetown Police Chief Jamey Kitchens, who spoke before the council on the item Monday, part of a longer campaign of advocacy. “People long before me have taken up this cause, and it has always been shot down for any number of reasons.”
One exception to officers’ plight, Kitchens noted, were cities and towns that participate in the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA), which offers portable retirement benefits, but only when an officer transfers to another GMA municipality. For example, an officer in Grovetown can carry the time from Grovetown to another agency that participates in GMA.
Kitchens also noted the impact that such a retirement system would have on recruitment and retention in law enforcement. He recalls beginning his career with Richmond County, being unsure after paying his way through the police academy whether there would be a position for him.
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“They were 798 strong at the time, and I was told somebody’s either going to have to die or quit or be fired, and we’ll try and you get a job. That is not the case anymore,” Kitchens said. “There is not an agency in the state of Georgia, certainly not here in the CSRA, that has not been affected over the past five to 10 years with recruitment and retention issues. That includes state agencies, state patrol, GBI, DNR, Department of Corrections.”
Councilmembers would ultimately vote unanimously in favor of adopting the resolution, which will then be sent to the capitol to be considered by the legislature.
“It’s high time for the people that are on the front lines out here, and for people like me that are trying to encourage folks to come into this profession to give them something to want to come into the profession for,” Kitchens said, before lauding the council’s decision. “I’m not familiar with any other council commission or anything that’s taking this step. And that means a lot.”
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
