Court Opinion

ID: 9861227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:49:44.609568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:45.082288
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting).
The question is whether an employee organization’s insurance proposal is to be considered a retirement system proposal. According to section 20.9, The Code, “[a]ll retirement systems shall be excluded from the scope of negotiations.” If the proposal here is not excluded under this provision it is a mandatory subject of bargaining because it is plainly one involving insurance.
According to the rubric “[i]n construing statutes the court searches for the legislative intent as shown by what the legislature said, rather than what it should or might have said.” Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(13). The legislature could have proscribed bargaining over retirement benefits; the majority obviously believes it should have. The difficulty is that the legislature did not proscribe what the majority does. In the belief that it makes better sense the majority strikes from the statute the term “retirement systems” and substitutes therefor the term “retirement benefits.” This violates our rubric of statutory construction, quoted above.
As noted by the majority the legislature has set up a number of retirement systems. See chapter 97, The Code (old age and survivors’ insurance system); chapter 97A, The Code (public safety peace officers’ retirement, accident, and disability system); chapter 97B, The Code (Iowa public employees’ retirement system). A retirement system, as envisioned by the legislature, calls for comprehensive plans for funding and sets up complex systems of benefits. The proposal here, a mere retirement benefit, falls far short of qualifying as a retirement system as understood by the legislature.
In seeking a reversal the city argues against the PERB determination by suggesting the employees here could circumvent the proscription against bargaining proposals on a piecemeal basis. The city raises the specter of a myriad of individual proposals which collectively would constitute a comprehensive retirement system. On this record there is no basis for such fear. We know only of the individual proposal. No pensions or other benefits are involved. We have no basis for believing this proposal might be a part of a scheme to propose a comprehensive retirement system.
I would affirm.
McCORMICK and LARSON, JJ., join this dissent.