Ayotte-Backed Group II Retirement Fix Not Enough To Stop Class Action Lawsuit

One of Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s first signature budget wins — increasing the pension payments for firefighters, police officers, and corrections workers — isn’t enough to stop disgruntled state workers from suing.
William Woodbury, representing several state and municipal employees in the Group II retirement pool, said Ayotte’s recent reforms don’t fix the fundamental problem: The system should never have been changed in 2011, he said.
“This [lawsuit] is to show those reforms were unconstitutional, and none of the reforms since then have made these plaintiffs whole,” Woodbury said this week during a hearing in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord.
Police officers, firefighters, and corrections employees, who are all part of the Group II pool, have been fighting to restore their pension benefits since the legislature changed the plan in 2011. At the time, a serious fix was needed to keep the New Hampshire Retirement System from fiscal disaster. The 2011 legislative fix took away benefits from Group II employees who were hired before 2011, but had not yet been vested with 10 years of service before 2012.
The result, according to the lawsuit, is an unconstitutional, retroactive law that forces employees to work years past their 20-year retirement date in stressful and dangerous positions, and still see the retirement benefits they were promised before the 2011 change cut by tens of thousands of dollars.
Since the reforms, critics of the move say New Hampshire has experienced a first responder staffing crisis. They claim the state’s pension system is often cited as a factor in candidates going somewhere else. According to WMUR in 2024, New Hampshire State Police are down more than 60 officers, Manchester Police are down 24, and Rochester is down 11. The New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) had a 52 percent vacancy rate in its entry-level jobs. Under the 2011 changes, DOC staff had to work 25 years for full retirement instead of 20.
Supporters of the changes say Americans simply don’t hold jobs as long as they used to, and employees are pulled away by higher pay and better work options today, not potential retirement payouts in the future.
Ayotte’s budget showdown with her fellow Republicans in the legislature was over their disagreement on the Group II pension issue. There are about 1,500 employees in the Group II plan retroactively impacted by the 2011 change, and Ayotte campaigned on a promise to make them whole.
Drew Cline, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, said Ayotte’s budget fight ended with a big win for her and the Group II employees. They didn’t get everything, but they came close, he said. New Hampshire’s pension system is underfunded, but in a much better position since the 2011 changes. Pushing benefits higher risks going back to unfunded mandates that ultimately burden taxpayers.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” Cline said.
The budget deal Ayotte got is appreciated, said Seifu Ragassa, President of the NH Group II Retirement Coalition, but it doesn’t completely close the gap.
“The NH Group II Retirement Coalition and its members are grateful to Gov. Ayotte and the legislators who supported her efforts to support our members and address the challenges faced by first responders over the past 14 years,” Ragassa said. “However, the fight to restore the benefits that were unjustly taken from first responders is far from over. We will continue to advocate until all benefits are fully restored—nothing more, nothing less.”