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Good morning. The Joint House-Senate Retirement Laws Committee will come to order. Committee Secretary, go ahead and please take the roll. Senators Foster?

Kolbeck. Here.

Senator Kolbeck.

Smith.

Here.

Vilhauer.

Here.

Representative Arlint.

Here.

Heinemann.

Here.

Kull.

Here. Muckey.

Here.

Senator Deibert.

Here.

Representative Weisgram.

Here.

Mr.

Chair, you have a quorum.

Thank you. Well, good morning, everybody. This is— my name is Representative Mike Weisgram. I'm from District 24. District 24 is pretty much in the middle of the state. I want to thank Senator Deibert for joining me here and the professional LRC staff. And we'll commence with the meeting this morning. Since this is an interim committee hearing and the first time we've met, there are no minutes to approve. Also, I should say, as a reminder, if you are testifying, please sign in. And also, for those in the room, please silence your cell phones. There is one item on our agenda For our consideration today.

Okay.

It is a consideration of the adjustment to the annual base salary of the executive director of the South Dakota Retirement System, as proposed by the Board of Trustees of the South Dakota Retirement System. Now, for context, I am going to read the first 6 sentences of South South Dakota Codified Law 3-12-209. The board shall appoint an executive director qualified by training and experience to serve at the leisure of the board. The board shall fix the compensation for the executive director. The compensation must be based on a compensation policy adopted by the board, which considers an analysis of the compensation and responsibilities of executive directors of regional statewide retirement systems. The board may adjust the salary of the executive director annually in accordance with the state employee salary policy as enacted by the legislature in each corresponding year. The board shall report any change in the executive director's compensation above the state employee salary policy to the Retirement Laws Committee before July— before July 1st for the upcoming fiscal year. The change in compensation above the state employee salary policy is effective if approved by a majority vote of the Retirement Laws Committee. Those are the first 6 sentences of an 11-page— 11-sentence codified law, and I read that because it really pertains to why we are here today. I would say that myself and Senator Deibert have concluded that we have a small window of oversight for— over the Board of Trustees, and that change in compensation must be either approved or not approved by this committee. Further, during the September 2026 meeting of the South Dakota Retirement System Board of Trustees, They move to approve an adjustment to the annual base salary of Travis Almond's compensation. Mr. Almond is the executive director. The proposed change consists of the standard state salary policy as it is set by— in the 2027, upcoming 2027 session, plus an additional market equity adjustment of 9.6%. The salary change would be effective on July 1st, 2027. As South Dakota Codified Law 3-12-209 stipulates, the next step in this process is for the Joint Retirement Laws Committee to vote to approve or not approve by simple majority the new salary. So that's why we're here. I would say that the reason why Senator Dybert and I brought this to this committee rather than waiting for the 2027 committee that will be appointed in soon after the elections is because we have had the— in our determination, we have had the opportunity To work with the retirement system for laws that have been brought before us and other committees. And we do have a sense of how Mr. Almond performs his duties. And we are also in receipt— or we all represent members of the South Dakota Retirement System from our districts. So, I thought it— we thought it really best for this committee to take it up and not the committee that will be— have less experience in that— with that information as the 2027 committees are formed. So, again, that's why we're here. So, at this time, I would entertain people to come forward for public testimony. And if you are a proponent of this move and you are in the room, please come forward. Thank you, sir. Thanks for coming forward. I'd ask you to tell us your name, possibly where you're from, and what your in your position.

I am Eric Schroeder. I am the chairman of the South Dakota Retirement Board of Trustees, and I actually represent state employees and work out of Mobridge, South Dakota, work for the Department of Transportation. And I have been in, um, this position as on the board for 22 years now, so I've actually been through this, uh, compensation I don't know if I would call it a fight, but this whole thing for 22 years. And I was going to give a little history as to how we got here and some of the rationale behind how we came up with the recommendation for the 9.6. I might take a second, and it's also in the room, we have our John Richter as our legal counsel, and then online you have Jim Apple, who is the vice chair of the system. And We purposely had Travis not come to this meeting because we're talking about his compensation and figured it wasn't appropriate to have him here since we're dealing with his compensation. But after mentioning that, like I say, we've dealt with this 22 years. When the previous executive director was there, Rob Wiley, we realized towards the end of his tenure that he was way below what market was for executive directors. And thinking ahead as to how we're going to replace him and what kind of salaries you would have to offer to be competitive to attract You know, qualified people for that position, we realized we needed to get his salary up. And we actually proposed at the time to try to formalize how we come up with the salary and to raise him up to closer to market. And at that time, as you know, we talked about the regional directors of other systems, and also there's some national data out there. And we had proposed a 16% raise for him towards the end of his tenure. Over a 2-year period, 8% a year for 2 years. And I'm not even sure we completely accomplished that. And some of it was timing with the LRC, with the Retirement Laws Committee. But even so, when he retired and we offered the job to Travis, we actually offered him a salary that was more competitive to what the market was, which was actually more than what Rob was making when he left, which— We really don't want to be in that position for the next executive director, so we want to try to keep his salary competitive. You know, we've— so we— as I became chairman, I saw we needed to formalize this process a lot more. We needed to— if you don't have a formal process and a set thing, a set way of doing it, it doesn't get done. And of course, this salary adjustment for the executive director has always been ad hoc. So every year we have to come and decide how much we're going to give him in addition to salary policy, and then go through this approval process, which is really a 3-step process. We have a committee, compensation committee and evaluation committee, that meets, evaluates him, reports back to the board as to what their recommendation might be for salary.

Okay.

Then the board has to approve it, and then the next step is here where we are. And the way we had it set up for years was to do that in April. And as you know, by the time you meet and we make a recommendation, it's so close to the end of the year, it's hard to get the, uh, this committee together. And so we realized we needed to move it earlier in the year, so that we moved it back to this September meeting this year.

Thank you.

That way, as you said, this board might have a chance to approve it or the next board that's appointed. And some of your reasons you suggested that why you would do it, we, we kind of thought through the same thing. But, um, as part of our policy, which we have out there for conversation, we would like to, you know, to keep the executive director within 10% of what we consider to be market. Now, how we came up with the market, we not only look at the executive directors of other systems that are in surrounding states, but we also have some national resources from NASRA, which is the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, and then CPERS, which is the National Council of Pension or Public Employee Retirement Systems. They both do salary surveys of executive directors. Which we participate in those salary studies too, and then we get information from them. So using data from both NCPRS and NASRA, we come up with what we consider to be market for our executive director. And NCPRS actually has a lot more information on what their executive directors are and their salaries because not every executive director does exactly the same thing. Some have much larger systems, some have more employees, some do things like health insurance or investing. We're more of the administration side. We take care of— make sure the benefits are paid. So we try to parse through that data that we get from NCPRS and NASRA to come up with a median.

Okay.

Of what executive directors make that are comparable to what Travis does. So with the help of the Bureau of Personnel and Darren Seeley's people, we go through that data and they come up with recommendations as to what we should set it at. Historical data from NASRA we have from 2022 and 2025, which is the most recent study they did. And then we've added the NCPRS data from 2025 because they really didn't— they just basically started doing this and giving us this information. But for fiscal year '25, the executive director of the SDRS lagged behind the NASRA median by approximately $70,000, and that's of the median, and $110,000 below the national average. Now blending the 50th percentile of the NCPRS peer metrics, specifically based on assets, number of members, and FTE headcounts, we established a tailored peer benchmark. Against this blended midpoint, the SDRS executive director is currently approximately between $60,000 or approximately 22% below what this median would be. To be clear, remaining 22% below the market median is not a viable long-term strategy. However, the 2028 recommendation is a measure phase step designed to stabilize our position and halt further erosion. As a compensation committee, we we see this as a kind of a multi-year step. We wanted to get him back to. basically where we were a year or 2 ago as compared to that, but then over the next couple years actually move them to where our policy says we should be within 10% of that. And some of that is, is we have to balance both our members' opinions, public opinion, and, you know, political reality with what we can actually do. But our goal is to get Up to that, within that 10% market of that. And that's why we proposed this 9.6%, which basically keeps us where we were. It actually doesn't catch us up very much. It just keeps us where we were a year or so ago. But going into these numbers just a little more, We also— I mentioned that we are using the 2025 data, and the BHR people, they actually aged this using a 3.4% per year inflation rate, which is a fairly conservative rate. And assuming that our policy, which we're guessing might be 2%, we took that data and aged the 2025 to the 2028 fiscal year. And that's basically where we came up with this 9.2%, is based on the data we had from that year plus the aging factor that we have. This is an analysis of the NASRA. We actually look worse than the NCPRS data. And that— from that data, we are about $90,000 behind the median. Even $136,000 behind the average, which is 29% and 38%, respectively, behind those averages for NCPRS or for NASRA. And like I said, we probably leaned a little bit heavier on the NCPRS data because it was, you know, sorted out a little better. We could tell how we compared more with other systems our size rather than, you know, some of these huge systems across the country.

Right.

which may pay quite a bit more. But even from that NCPRS data, we're still, you know, 27% behind that. So that's why we— this is basically a first step. And I would suspect, and I, I really hope, that next year we'll be coming with another raise, um, more than the state salary policy, which we do not know yet, to Catch us up with that. But then we'll also have new data that we can base it on next year. But this should be a multi-year process. And as I said, we've tried to refine this. We've made it more formal on how we're going to go through the process, try to make the timeline fit your guys' timeline better. This time of the year makes much more sense to bring this information than April did. And the problem is we've gone so many years. without actually getting a raise either because it didn't make sense to propose one or we couldn't get the committee together to approve it. I hope that this works better. And then this isn't necessarily set in stone either. If we see things that need to change in our policy and how we're going to propose this, then we'll make those changes. But we're committed to try to keep him at least close, and it's fair to him and it's also helpful for us as we—

Yeah.

look for our next executive director, which Travis won't work forever. I mean, you always should be thinking ahead for these things. Otherwise, unless you have more questions, that's the end of my statement.

Okay, Mr. Schroeder, thank you. Thanks for your testimony. Um, I would imagine you'll stay around for questions. Yes.

Okay.

Are there any other proponents in the room? I would like to testify.

I would like to testify.

Yes. So, uh, there are any proponents online, and I'm sure that's, that's you, correct?

Yeah.

Hi, I'm, uh, James Apple. I'm the vice chair. I've been in this position for now about, um, 3 years, um, of the South Dakota Retirement System. I'm, I'm with the teachers, uh, the teachers that have been the ones who have, um, I've been fortunate enough that they've trusted me in this position. One thing I want to add on to, you know, what Erik was saying was, you know, the one thing about Travis is we've done his evaluation over the years, and I was kind of on the committee in charge of that for a couple years here. And we've been going through and doing reviewing and evaluation on him, and we've got a new process in place, and he has literally met all the standards. And anything that needed to get changed, he was able to change those from to year. And so we're really pleased with the direction the SDRS is going with the leadership up there. But one thing I want to point out is when we did the review and I'd go meet with him personally with it and visit with him about the review and everything, I'd say, Travis, you know, it's time for a— we need to make sure you are competitive with this, with the salaries around there. And his response always was like, hey, the state employees aren't getting a big raise. They're getting a 1% raise or whatever it would be.

I'm sorry.

Getting out. He goes, I don't feel comfortable getting this. And he's such a humble person. That's what he'd say every time. He'd say, no, no, no, it's just the timing's not right. We got other things going on. And that's why we have let it slide. And that's part of it is because he was just like, I don't know, no, no, no, no, no. And he kept saying that. Well, finally, as a board, we finally decided, no, that's— we can't let it slide anymore. You know, we were like saying, hey, maybe we should try to, you know, let's try to work for him to get him so we don't fall in such a deep hole as we're falling in now. As you can see by the numbers, give them a 5% raise on top of that. We were thinking the last couple years, so we're there. And he just kept— he was like, no, I really don't. But we finally said it's time. We can't allow this to happen anymore. So that's why we decided we need to get them an appropriate raise so that way, whenever the time comes up, we will be in position for the next You know, executive director. You know, hopefully Travis is around for a while, but we all know, hey, how these positions work. So we expect him to be around for a while. But the key is right now, you know, we just want to make sure we don't fall as far behind as we did. Because like he was saying with Rob, like Erik mentioned with Rob, we fell way behind. And that was quite disappointing when we finally ran the numbers and were able to take a look at them. And so, you know, we got Travis when he started, which was, you know, Kind of a— I hate to say it, an insult to Rob. He started ahead of him because we are so far behind, because we wanted to make sure we get this one where it needs to be. And we got it where it needs to be. And again, like we said, we are slipping right now, and that's kind of one of the reasons why we really need this increase. And, you know, we talked to him about to really get where he needs to be, it really needs to be, you know, more than not this 9.6%. It really needs to be more of a You know, 18% or whatever, somewhere around there, 18 to 20%. And, you know, Travis is kind of like, you know, I don't really— that, that's just not right. So we're kind of with the greed with the part with, you know, with the committee going through it, that the 9.6% raise, uh, and then with on top of it would do more to get him. Mr. Apple, questions? I will stick around.

Okay. We did lose connection there for a bit, but I appreciate your testimony, and thank you for your thoughts and willingness to hang around for questions. So thank you. Are there any further proponents in the room or online? Seeing none, we'll move to opponents. And we have an opponent in the room. So please come forward and state your name and your position, and we'll look forward to your testimony.

Hello, Chairman Weisgram, Vice Chair Deibert, and members of the committee. I am Renae Randall, and I'm speaking on my own behalf. I have uploaded to LRC and sent you all individually documents that I see have not been made public yet, much like the documents I sent on February 5th, of evidence of unethical and possibly criminal behavior of the SDRS director, Travis Almond. These documents include Page 1, the SDIC board proving that Travis Almond is on the SDIC board. Page 2 through 55 is the last email between Renae Randall and Matt Clark with the whistleblower laws in it that I would get fired for whistleblowing by voicemail 30 minutes afterwards, after that email. And the 50-ish page document of notes that I took of the last 6 months of my career as senior investment manager At the SDIC that I reported to the SDIC board, proving that I sent Travis Almond directly a report about my being fired for whistleblowing at the South Dakota Investment Council. Page 56 through 58 is the June 4th SDRS board meeting of executive session personnel matters, just a few days after I got fired. And likely the SDRS board giving the go-ahead for the SDIC to send me an NDA. Page 59 through 60 is the June 5th, 2025 SDIC board meeting of executive session personnel matters with BHRA, which was likely Darren Seeley, another SDRS board member. This was likely to approve the payout for the NDA. Page 61 through 68 is the NDA the SDIC board sent me a few weeks later through Melanie Carpenter at Woods Fuller. It changes the whistleblower firing to a voluntary quitting, therefore erasing the crime. It also demands that I never speak of this again, and I couldn't work at any South Dakota government agency ever again, and It wouldn't be disclosed in the public records. The SDIC board minutes with personnel matters legal update for the next several meetings is on page 69 through 83. Page 84, the deleted audio record of that June 4th, 2025 SDRS board meeting on the S. The South Dakota Boards and Commission website. I did listen to that audio, so I kind of know why it's been deleted. Page 85, I've noticed all the SDRS board minutes. These are laws that people would be breaking by rewarding this behavior, and the extraordinary effort that I've made to try to fulfill my legal requirement, um, to report this unsuccessfully so far. Nobody has accepted a report from me yet. So I believe Travis Almond doesn't deserve a raise for this behavior. He deserves to be investigated. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for your testimony. Are there any other opponents in the room or online? Any other opponents? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and close testimonies and open question— open it up to questions from the committee. Committee, do you have any questions?

Mr.

Chair.

Representative Arlint, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Question for the committee. Board chair or vice chair, please. Board chair, maybe since he's in the room, might be easier.

Okay, Mr. Schroeder, why don't you come forward? And all questions come through the chair. Go ahead, Representative.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Schroeder. Could you please share with the committee when you were going through this process, which I appreciate how detailed you shared with us, what was the vote count from your committee members for approval of the Go ahead.

It was unanimous.

Did you, did you hear that, Representative?

Thank you. Uh, no follow-up.

Okay, thank you. Any, uh, any further questions from the committee?

Mr. Chairman.

Senator Deibert.

Thank you. You might as well return to the podium there. This is for Mr. Schroeder, if I may, Mr. Chair.

Go right ahead.

When you looked at this proposed increase, did you— is it your opinion it's a merit raise or it's just compensation to get this individual to the the compensation that's associated with this position and the responsibilities of the position.

Mr.

Chair?

Go ahead.

I, I truly deserve— I think Travis deserves a merit raise, but no, this is really just to get him to what's comparable for this position. I think if you were going to go on his merits, you'd actually be giving him quite a bit more. Because as far as our evaluation committee is concerned, he does a great job.

Follow-up, please.

Yes, go ahead.

So, um, I'm a little confused. Maybe you can set me straight. Most of the discussion was about 9.6%, but you mentioned 9.2% in, in your discussion.

Was that just—

so it's 9.6%? 9.6%.

If I said 9.2%, I Thank you.

Okay, any further questions? Oh, uh, Senator Vilhauer, I see you have your hand up.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, first of all, the question was almost identical to Senator Deibert just asked, so I'll pass on that. But I do have one follow-up. It's a follow-up really to the answer to Representative Arlint's question. Mr. Schroeder, how many How many board— how many members sit on the Board of Trustees? You said it was unanimous. How many are we speaking of?

Mr. Schroeder, go ahead. There are 17 members on the board from all the different units that are representative, and of everybody that was present that day voted for it. I don't think everybody was there that day, but it was unanimous for what was there.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions from the committee? I, I have one, Mr. Schroeder. Most of my questions have been answered by the presentations, um, as well as follow-up questions from committee. How long has the current director been serving in this capacity?

I'm trying to remember. Rob left in 2019, I think. So since about 2019 or 2020. I don't have the exact date, of course, but it's been approximately that time period.

Okay, uh, I think I know the answer to this because it's— I I think it was covered, but well, how often do you look at the compensation policy? I mean, what I'm hearing from you is that this request is because of your policy and because of the codified law that says you have to look at it regionally. So how often do you do that?

We've— we're doing this every year. We have since I've been chair. I can't really speak how— if we did it every year before that. That's the last 3 years we've met. The last couple years with the budget and the way employee raises were basically suggesting zero, we felt it wasn't the proper time. And, and we weren't quite as far behind either. We had a fairly substantial raise for everybody a few years ago. And we actually moved several key members up. Travis was not included in that, those bigger raises that were given out to several employees around the state, which that actually kind of pushed us more to look at this every year. And now we've changed the timeline this year to be a little bit earlier so we could be more proactive. It's very difficult to try to get this committee together in April. In May to do this last minute.

Okay, that concludes my questioning. However, Representative Muckey has his hand up. Representative, do you have a question?

I do.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For Mr. Stroder, just continuing a couple clarifying questions here for you. When you're sharing your presentation, you're mentioning NASRA. Are you talking National Administration?

Do you know the direction?

I think he was asking if NASRA is the National Association of Retirement Administrators, and that's what it is. And it's a group of basically all the large state plans, and they put together information about all kinds of things, but executive director salaries, other salaries. And CPERS, of course, is the National Council of Public Employee Retirement Systems, which is a Another organization that puts together a lot of information for us. Those are the 2 really big national groups of retirement, public retirement system associations, I guess you'd call them. So we rely on them for a lot of education, a lot of information.

So.

Okay, um, so, uh, as, as you've mentioned that In my tenure of Retirement Laws Committee, seemingly there are 2 other retirement systems in the state— excuse me, in the country— that mirror ours in being 100% funded, if my memory serves me correct. Is Indiana one of them?

No.

Wisconsin, one of them.

Wisconsin's one of them.

And there's seemingly another one that is—

There's some in Florida, I think.

It's possibly as responsive.

There's a few. There's a few. There's just a handful. Okay. We are one of the top funded and rated systems in the country. Actually, a lot of people are looking at our model and trying to implement that. This system is Even in— and if you talk in CPERS or some of those others in ASRA, and they'll point to us as, as this is how you do business. Or if you look at the Pew studies, I mean, they point to us in some of those systems as, boy, this is the way that the country should be running their systems to be well-funded and to balance the benefits with the income, you know.

My question from that is the Wisconsin director. Would would he have been in the regional? Okay, so his his metrics are in that. Okay, all right. Any other questions from the committee?

Mr. Chair, I apologize. Did my I'm assuming my question cut out?

Yes, it it it did, Representative Muckey. I I we may have addressed it, but go ahead and. And clarify, if you would, please.

Oh, thank you, um, Mr. Schroeder. Thanks. Sorry about that. I was looking to make sure I clarified the acronym for NASRA. The follow-up question I had to that was, in that comparison you reference, are we comparing executive director salaries when you're talking about median salary?

Go ahead.

Yeah, that's median salary. We, we like to, um, we, we try to make sure that we're comparing similar positions to similar positions because not all executive directors do the exact same job. They have different duties, depends on how their system is defined. Like I say, some get involved with the investments more, some have much bigger systems, of course, and even some of them take care of the healthcare, have retiree healthcare and stuff. So we want to try to make sure our salary comparisons try to compare Any follow-up, Representative Muckey?

Uh, just one more follow-up, Mr. Chair, if I may.

Go ahead.

As you look at this, Mr. Schroeder, I understand very well from what you're presenting to us why we need to ensure that this position is competitive based on our regional markers and what statute provides. One of the questions I have for you And maybe just for the Retirement Board in general, as we get questions about the COLA raises or state employee raises and we see an increase that's higher than that, how do you go about sharing that with the public to help them understand the metrics that you use to provide this compensation update?

Go ahead, Mr. Streeter.

That question is fairly detailed. Of course, our We have a set policy and procedure that's codified on how we set COLA. COLA is basically based on what the system can afford to be 100% funded and also the CPI. The compensation for the executive director is not tied to the COLA at all. So they're really 2 separate questions. You want to have qualified people running your plan, so you have to offer competitive wages. And, and the salary increases that we ask for, for the executive director, are, are more to how, how are we going to retrain— retain quality people to run our system. Um, you, of course, you always have to play in the— to the backdrop of what's going on in the economy, what's going on with state employee raises, and what's Retiree raises. But if you don't have people running the system that are good at what they do, those raises are going to be limited anyway on, on what you can afford. Because without the right people in the right seats, you're going to have a hard time keeping up with inflation and, and keeping those up. So they're tied in that sense, but they're not tied.

Representative Muckey, is— do you have any follow-up or any other questions?

No further follow-up for me. Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Schroeder.

You're welcome. Okay, further questions from the committee? Further questions? Okay, I'm going to close the question portion of the meeting and go to committee discussion. Any discussion on the comments and questions that we've heard? Okay, I'll move to committee discussion and/or action.

Mr.

Chair.

Representative Arlint.

I would make a motion. I believe it's a motion to approve is the correct motion, the consideration of the adjustment.

That is the correct motion if that's where you want to go. Do we have a second?

I will second that motion.

Thank you. So we have a motion on the floor and a second to approve the approval of the South Dakota Retirement System Board of Trustees recommendation for the salary increase proposal. Any comments, uh, Representative Arlint, on your motion?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I think one of the things that's incredibly important for us to remember is that that 17-member board is made up of representatives that include our state employees, teachers, Board of Regents, municipal employees, municipal officials, classified employees, county commissioners, public safety So these— this particular Board of Trustees is representing employees that are currently paying into our South Dakota retirement system, as well as those that are receiving disbursements. So they have an incredibly vested interest in the success of our program, and it's clear that they have confidence in Travis, which is why I made the approved motion.

Thank you, Amber.

Thank you, Representative Arlin. Senator Bilhauer, do you have any comments on your second?

Yes, yes, I do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I would like to echo what Representative Arlin just said. I'm in the unique position I not only have served on this committee for the last two years, I served on the Board of Trustees for four years. I served with Mr. Apple, Mr. Schroeder. I appreciate. Seeing them again this morning. And I was impressed from the get-go how dedicated, transparent, and professional that board has been over the years and the efforts they have taken to ensure that the, what, 100,000+ participants, whatever the number is by now, that their interests are being watched out for. And I have gotten to know Mr. Almond personally fairly well. Outstanding individual. I've been impressed with what he brings to this position, and I wholeheartedly support the the raise that we're looking at giving him. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Senator Kolbeck, you have your hand up. Do you have a thought?

Yes, just quickly. I see this more as trying to keep a wage in line, no different than our highway patrol or teachers or anybody else that works for state government. If there was something That we needed to do a correction later, it's harder. So I'm glad that we are trying to get this more in line. So if we did have to make a change, regardless of feelings for the current executive director, which I feel he does a fine job, but it's more about keeping wages in line to me with the extra. So I just wanted to make that known on a public comment that we're trying to keep up— not keep up with the Joneses, but we have to. Acknowledge the fact that if you're going to have good people in these positions, you have to pay them.

Thank you, Senator Kolbeck. Senator Deibert, you have a thought?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I, uh, based on Representative Arlint's comments, I think it's important to note that the people on the board represent the people that are in the program, and them having a policy and a long-term plan to reach the goals of this compensation That's really important that the members' voices are heard. So I support the motion too. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Representative Muckey, is that— do you have your hand up?

I do. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir. Go ahead.

Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I, I want to echo some of the comments that have been made here. I think it's important that given that we have a representative board, especially when it comes to the salary policy that's been set by them, that there is clear guidance on Regional compensation and how we approach that, that that is something that's being presented to us today as opposed to an effort or an action that is outside of a typical policy. And so I think it's important for folks tuning in to understand that. I think it's also important for us as we make decisions like this to hear and understand when we do receive communications from folks around the state about salary and compensation relative to COLA benefits for the retirement system itself or for folks like our state employees or our teachers. I understand those concerns and those issues that have been raised to me in terms of communication. I think it's important also to understand, as has been brought here, our intent of trying to ensure that this position is competitive. We have an interesting balancing act to play here. And so ultimately, I support the motion given that we need to make sure that this position remains competitive while also hearing the concerns of our constituents across the state. Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you. Any other discussion? Uh, Senator Red Dawn Foster, uh, would you like to make a comment? Okay, I may have Not seeing the— my screen correctly here, but okay. I think I'll go ahead and conclude with my final comment. District 24 is, as I indicated, is who I represent, and I have a large contingent of members that are receiving benefits from South Dakota Retirement System. I have yet in my 6 years of representing District 24 had— I have not had one negative comment about how the system operates or Mr. Almond's performance. I will say in my position of chair, I have received a handful of comments That would not be favorable to his— to this increase. But they've mostly been around that the COLAs haven't kept up with inflation. Now, the distinction between the Investment Council's returns and how we operate the retirement systems to me are, yes, they're joined, but they're distinctly different. So, The other comment I'd like to make is when we see bills come before us, either in the retirement system or maybe local government or whatever, regarding the retirement system and how it operates, I have been so impressed with Mr. Almond and the team on how they clarify things to me. I'm not a member of the retirement system, and I've been very pleased with how Mr. Almond and the team have given me the information I've sought to make reasonable decisions on how I vote. So I too will, as the vote comes up here, I will be supporting that, uh, the motion. So with that, uh, committee secretary, could you please take the roll? Senators Foster, Kolbeck.

Aye.

Smith.

Aye.

Vilhauer.

Aye.

Representative Arlint?

Aye.

Heinemann?

Aye. Kull?

Aye.

Muckey?

Aye.

Senator Deibert?

Aye.

Representative Weisgram?

Aye.

Mr.

Chair, you have 9 yeas, One excused. Thank you. The approval of the salary policy requested by the SDARS Board of Trustees passes. Thank you all for, for, uh, coming to Pierre today and, and/or attending electronically. I appreciate it very much so we could conduct our business. This concludes the business of That concludes the items of our agenda, and I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

Before I make a motion to adjourn, a reminder, we will have a meeting in December. Is that correct?

That is correct. The next meeting of the joint retirement laws is in December, correct.

Thank you. I move to adjourn.

Smith, second.

We have a motion and a second on the floor to adjourn. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Aye.

Motion carried. We are adjourned.