Vet’s survivor benefits cause new debate

02/25/2006

Mark Brunswick,
Star Tribune
Last update: February 25, 2006 – 12:35 AM

A year ago this week, newlywed Amy Day learned that her husband of four months had been killed while serving in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard.

Before he was deployed, David Day was a police officer in St. Louis Park. Now the two public service roles her husband played—the soldier and the cop—are painfully converging in a debate that pits prudence with public dollars against what the public owes military families.

Amy Day recently learned that the state police and fire pension board wants to stop paying her a $1,700-a-month police survivor benefit.

The board wants the city of St. Louis Park to pick up the tab. It’s citing a provision in state law that prohibits a survivor from getting death benefits from the pension fund if the couple have been married less than one year.

The Days were married less than a week before David departed for war in October of 2005. Sweethearts since high school, they had pushed up wedding plans because of his pending yearlong deployment.

Amy Day would have lost out on the survivor benefits if not for an effort in the final evenings of the 2005 special legislative session. Saying the one-year requirement was designed to prevent sham deathbed marriages and clearly did not apply to the Days, supportive lawmakers attached an amendment to an unrelated emergency bill.

Under the amendment, which was supported by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, spouses of police and firefighters married for less than a year but in military service are eligible for in-the-line-of-duty death benefits if they are killed while deployed. The bill is retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001.

So far, Amy Day is the only spouse to have qualified for the benefit.

b>Board in ‘awkward position’

The state police and fire pension board wants to revisit Amy Day’s payments when the Legislature convenes next week. The board’s position is that it is unfair to provide the benefit only to members of the police and fire fund and not others who may be killed while in the National Guard and Reserves.

The state’s Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement is scheduled to vote on a proposal to change the Day survivor’s benefit when it meets on Monday.

“It is an awkward position for us to be in. A lot of people are really offended,” admits Mary Vanek, executive director of the Public Employment Retirement Association.

The pension fund has been required to set aside $367,000 to fund the long-term costs of the benefit for Amy Day, who is 24.

Rep. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, one of those who introduced the exemption amendment, said the cost is “not insignificant."But it’s absurd to be putting the widow of a police officer who died for his country in the middle of this.”

St. Louis Park’s police chief and city manager had encouraged Day to pursue the waiver while helping her wade through the paperwork after her husband’s death. She never called or approached the city about seeking the waiver and St. Louis Park officials said they are taken aback by the state’s suggestion that the city now pay up. It comes at a time when city finances are increasingly tight, having lost nearly $6 million in state funding over the past two years.

The idea “that we’re now obligated to pay for this, I just can’t understand at all,” said City Manager Tom Harmening.

Not the first exception

There have been exceptions to the one-year marriage rule before.

In 1991, special legislation allowed the widow of a St. Paul police officer to receive death benefits, even though the couple had been married less than a year and the death was not duty-related. In 2003, a survivor benefit was granted to the widow of a St. Paul firefighter killed in a snowmobile accident while off-duty.

Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley, was the chief author of the overall pension bill in 2003, but said he was not a sponsor of the exemption, which he said he nonetheless supported because the firefighter’s widow would otherwise have received nothing. In Amy Day’s case, she is eligible to receive a federal death benefit, believed to be almost $1,000 a month, in addition to the state benefit.

Betzold is now championing the effort to force St. Louis Park to pay. He said the last-minute amendment created bad policy that could end up costing the pension fund millions. It also singles out the police and fire pension fund for special benefits, which Betzold said is unfair to others who serve and are killed in the military.

“This is what happens when you have people who don’t know anything about pension law trying to write their own pension law. And now we’ve got a huge problem the pension funds are going to have to face because they botched it trying to help one individual,” Betzold said.

Betzold, a retired colonel in the Army Reserve, said he has become a target of criticism for pushing to revisit the issue but he believes the principle is important—and that it’s his duty to protect the pension fund.

“It’s been the big bad legislator—me—beating up on some poor widow. And that’s unfair,” Betzold said.

Sen. Steve Kelley, DFL-Hopkins, who has pushed in the Senate for Day’s benefits, said providing the benefit is consistent with the principle of the state sharing in the sacrifice of a country at war. The in-the-line-of-duty exception for the one-year marriage requirement takes out the threat of the sham marriage, he said.

“The burden of it should not be borne only by service men and women and their families who are sent. It’s a moral proposition, that the rest of us should have to face up to the human and financial costs of the war. That’s what this language was all about,” he said.

St. Louis Park Police Chief John Luce said he told Amy Day of the renewed debate over the benefits.

“It’s very upsetting to her,” he said. “It’s not about the money; it just brings up emotions again.”

And it comes at a difficult time. Tuesday was the one-year anniversary of David Day’s death.

The Day family had a small memorial service in Morris, Minn., David’s hometown.