People who do not have access to a pension plan, 401(k) or individual retirement account through their employers came one step closer to getting some help Tuesday when the Oregon Senate voted narrowly in favor of a bill that would create a new state-managed retirement savings plan they could use starting July 2017.

“Nearly half of all Oregonians do not have a retirement plan at work,” said Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield, who carried the legislation through the Senate, which passed it 17-13. “Too many Americans and too many Oregonians are not saving enough money for their retirement. … This bill makes it easier (for them) to save.”

House Bill 2960, which passed the House 32-26 on June 10, is now on its way to Gov. Kate Brown’s desk.

The bill creates a seven-member Oregon Retirement Savings Board and tasks it with creating a state-managed retirement savings plan that would:

• Feature an automatic payroll deduction employees can change or cancel whenever they choose.

• Give employees the chance to automatically increase the size of this deduction year after year.

• Be portable so employees could take it with them as they move from job to job.

Beyer said the plan would resemble the Oregon College Savings Plan because it would pool individual contributions into a large, privately managed investment fund. Private-sector employers would be required to offer this plan to their employees if they did not already offer a retirement savings plan of their own.

“This is a huge win for those who worry about how to save for their retirement years,” said Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler, who cited a recent report from the Oregon Retirement Savings Task Force that found half the state’s workers have less than $20,000 in retirement savings and a fourth have less than $1,000.

He said senior citizens who have not saved enough money for retirement end up draining money from safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps because they do not earn enough money from Social Security to cover their expenses.

But although House Bill 2960 gained endorsements from AARP Oregon, the Oregon Nurses Association, SEIU Local 503 and other organizations, it faced fierce opposition from Republicans in both the Senate and the House.

“This is not the right direction to go,” said state Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, who voted against the bill along with state Reps. Knute Buehler, R-Bend; Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte; and Gene Whisnant, R-Sunriver. “We can and we should be doing better.”

Knopp said employers already have access to dozens of privately managed retirement plans and the “government-run option (sponsored by Beyer ) does not need to be one of them.”

He and Senate Republicans also said there was no guarantee the proposed retirement savings plan would be exempt from protections contained in the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1975 — which could make the state and any employer that offered a retirement plan susceptible to lawsuits disgruntled beneficiaries could file in federal court. Knopp and Senate Republicans proposed an amendment that would delay the plan’s creation until after these exemptions had been guaranteed.

Beyer and the plan’s supporters said this amendment was frivolous because there was no way to find out whether these exemptions would be granted until after the task force created its retirement savings plan. They also said the bill already contains language that bars the retirement savings board from doing anything that would place a financial burden on state government or employers that offer the plan.

— Reporter: 541-617-7816,

mmclean@bendbulletin.com