Darlene Perez AGO 2015-4 No. 2015-04
Connecticut Attorney General Opinions Office of the Attorney General State of Connecticut November 16, 2015 Darlene Perez Teachers[1] Retirement Board Administrator Connecticut Teachers' Retirement Board 765 Asylum Avenue Hartford, CT 06105-2822 Dear Ms. Perez, You have requested this office's opinion regarding whether the State Teachers' Retirement Board ("STRB") has the statutory authority to rescind credit for a member in the teachers' retirement system ("System") if it learns through a source other than the Department of Education ("Department") that the teacher is not properly certified for the position in which he or she is then employed.' We conclude that the STRB does not have statutory authority to rescind credit for a "teacher" who is not properly certified for the position in which he or she is employed: the controlling statute only permits the STRB to suspend credit until the teacher becomes properly certified, and then only when the Department has "notified" the teacher that he or she is not properly certified, First, we note that upon receiving your request our office initially advised you to determine with the Department whether a procedure could be developed by which either the Department notifies the STRB of situations in which a teacher is improperly certified, or the STRB notifies the Department that it has learned of such improper certification. The STRB ultimately informed this office that no such procedure has been developed with the Department, but renewed its request for this opinion. To answer your inquiry, we must examine §10-183rr of the Connecticut General Statutes. If the meaning of the "text is plain and unambiguous and does not yield absurd or unworkable results, extra textual evidence of the meaning of the statute shall not be considered." Connecticut General Statutes § 1-2z; 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 further 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...