Bill heads to Senate floor that would allow Lexington to re-hire retired police officers

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ) – Senate bill 89 was filed earlier this month by Senator Donald Douglas and Senator Amanda Bledsoe.

It’s a bill specific to Lexington and its police department and would allow Lexington to re-hire retired police officers.

“It will give them the same advantages that many of the police departments across the commonwealth already enjoy,” said Senator Douglas.

According to Senator Douglas a similar bill was passed years ago for cities across the state, but Lexington was left out, being an urban county government.

For Mayor Linda Gorton, the bill would help combat the city’s ongoing police officer shortage.
Though it only allows the city to re-hire 25 retired officers.

“Like all cities across the nation, we have had difficulties hiring police officers and so right now we currently have 533 sworn officers and we are down a few more than 100” said Mayor Linda Gorton.

If the bill turns into law, there would be conditions for re-employment.
The retiree has to have been retired for 30 days or less, has no administrative charges pending, and the retiree would be hired for a 1-year term with the option of renewal.

The bill also states that the re-hired officer would still receive all retirement health insurance benefits but will not be able to accrue additional benefits and could not contribute to retirement funds during re-employment.

Mayor Gorton says the city has made many changes to recruit more officers.

She says this bill would be another step in the right direction.

“We have done many things, we have significantly raised salaries, we raised our minimum maximum starting age, we increased our marketing and advertising efforts, we have increased the number of recruit classes that we fund and we believe this bill will help us recruit folks who are already familiar with and who have served our city.”

The bill passed unanimously Wednesday in committee and will head to the Senate floor.