Darlene Perez
AGO 15-3
No. 15-03
Connecticut Attorney General Opinions
Office of the Attorney General State of Connecticut
June 17, 2015
Darlene Perez
Teachers' Retirement Board Administrator
Connecticut Teachers' Retirement Board
765 Asylum Avenue
Hartford, CT 06105-2822
Dear Ms. Perez:
Dear Ms. Perez:
You have requested this office's opinion regarding whether there are any statutory limits on the compensation provided to reemployed teachers (including superintendents)
[1] pursuant to Connecticut General Statutes §10-183v(a). Specifically, you ask whether a reemployed teacher may be provided with "fringe benefits" "in addition to 45% of the maximum salary for the position." We conclude that a local board of education is statutorily authorized to "reemploy" a retired teacher currently receiving a retirement benefit from the Teachers' Retirement System ("System"), but the retired teacher may receive "no more than forty-five per cent of the maximum salary level for the assigned position." C.G.S. §10-183v(a). A teacher reemployed pursuant to Connecticut General Statutes § 10-183v(a) is not entitled to compensation beyond the 45% the statute permits in any other form such as employer-paid health insurance, annuities, monetary contributions to deferred compensation retirement plans, car/housing allowances, or cell phones, etc.
To answer your inquiry, we first examine §10-183v of the Connecticut General Statutes to determine what compensation is permissible when a teacher is reemployed while receiving a retirement benefit from the System because "[t]he meaning of a statue shall ... be ascertained from the text of the statute itself and its relationship to other statutes." Conn. Gen. Stat. §1-2z. If the "meaning" of the "text is plain and unambiguous and docs not yield absurd or unworkable results, extratextual evidence of the meaning of the statute shall not be considered."
Id.; see also
Mattatuck Museum-Mattatuck Historical Society v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, 238 Conn. 273, 278 (1996) (finding that when statutory language is "plain and unambiguous," courts will look no farther than the words themselves because it is assumed "that the language expresses the legislature's intent"). On the other hand, "[a] statute is ambiguous if, when read in context, it is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation."
Hartford/Windsor Healthcare Properties, LLC v. City of Hartford, 298 Conn. 191, 197-98 (2010). Statutory silence, however, "does not necessarily equate to ambiguity."
Id.
Connecticut General Statutes §10-183v(a) provides in relevant part that:
Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, a teacher receiving retirement benefits from the system may not be employed in a teaching position receiving compensation paid out of public money appropriated fr school purposes except that such teacher may be employed in such a position and receive no more than forty-five per cent of the maximum salary level for the assigned position. Any teacher who receives
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