Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-01
TEACHER PENSION
BILL IS ADVANCED
Delegate Hall Gets Measure
Up for Final Passage.
Senate May Kill 1t.

I
RICHMOND, Va, March His sec
ond victory within as many days, Dele
gate Wilbur C. Hall of Loudoun County
yesterday succeeded in having en-
crossed and advanced to third reading
in the House his teachers retirement
bill. The House voted to advance the
measure after verbal battle between
Hall and Ashton G. Dovell, chairman of
the appropriations committee. The vote
was 81 to %, with 10 members not vot-
ing.
Immediately after voting to advance
the Hall bill, however, the House also
voted to advance the Dovell bill setting
up commission to make study of the
retirement situation and report at the
next session. Opponents of the latter
measure said that its passage would be
taken as an indication by the Senate
that that body was expected to defeat
the Hall bill when both measures reach
ed the calendar of the upper body.
In explaining the retirement bill, Hall
declared that the old law, by which
teachers contribute per cent Of their
salaries and the State contributes &c.,
900 yearly had broken down, was I'M
sound and that under it the annuities
for retired teachers could not be paid.
The new bill provides that teachers
shall contribute 5 per cent of their SAL
aries, this amount to be matched by
the State.
The bill, he said, would set up a
board consisting of the State treasurer,
superintendent of public instruction, two
members to be appointed by the Gov
ernor and three members named by the
Governor from list to be furnished by
the Virginia Educational Association.
The fund would then be operated on an
annuity insurance plan and is so sound,
he said, that three large insurance
companies have offered to take 1t over
Teachers withdrawing under the Hall
bill would be paid, after certain num-
Der of years, the amount paid into the
fund by them, plus the interest on the
money.
Dovell assailed the measure as estab-
fishing a policy of pensioning State
employees. He called attention to the
list of persons classed as teachers I'M
der the bill, including any member of
the professional staff of the State De-
partment of Education or the profess
sional staff of the Virginia Educational
Association"
Dovell, as chairman of the House
appropriations committee, said that the
teachers annuities under the old law
would not be stopped in the next two
years, as the appropriations committee
of the House and the finance commit
tee of the Senate had written into the
general appropriations bill an item of
$4,000 to care for the shortage in the
fund. Hall then arose and declared
that the necessity for a special appro-
priation to care for the shortage was but
another evidence that the old law was
no longer effective.
When the Dovell commission bill was
called for advancement Delegate j. B.
- T1tV.o. IL liz 41.Ak L.,
stricken from the calendar. He was
supported by Hall and Delegate j.
Vaughan Gary of Richmond.
Maj. r. A. Mcintyre of Fauquier told
the House that the only aid that could
be provided for the teachers at the
present session was in the Hall bill:
that "as long as you do not pay your
rural teachers as much as you do your
farm hands you should at least make
adequate provisions for their comfort
when they retire"
When it came to a vote, however, the
Dovell bill supporters defeated the mo-
ton to dismiss by vote of 81 to %.