Employer Requirements and Information

Who does this affect?

All employees who have been in your employment for less than five (5) years AND initially declined participating in the MainePERS PLD Consolidated Plan. (In this initial year of the program, employees who reached their fifth year of employment anniversary between November 1, 2021 and November 1, 2022 would be eligible. As of 2023, only employees with less than five (5) years of employment will be eligible.)

What are the Employer requirements?

Prior to September 1, 2022, employers must notify their employees who have less than five (5) years of employment AND initially declined participating in the PLD Plan AND any employees who reached their fifth year of employment anniversary between November 1, 2021 and November 1, 2022 about the open enrollment period.

Employers need to provide these employees with a Limited Period Open Enrollment Application for Membership, This form must be completed by all employees eligible for the open enrollment and requires them to indicate if they wish to participate in the PLD Plan or continue to decline participation. The Limited Period Open Enrollment Application for Membership must be completed by your eligible employees and returned to you no later than November 1, 2022. Your employees’ elections must then be reported to us by submitting electronic Limited Period Open Enrollment Applications to us via Employer Self Service.

We have available a sample notice you can send to your eligible employees which is available here. The Limited Period Open Enrollment Application for Membership form is also here.

Additionally, we would recommend that you encourage these non-participating, MainePERS eligible employees to attend one of our Zoom information sessions. These session will be held on August 22 at noon, August 29 at 2:30 pm, September 21 at 10:00 am and October 19 at 9:00 am. Your employees can register by calling us at 1-800-451-9800 or by emailing us at [email protected].

Administering the Limited Period Annual Open Enrollment

Important Information

Some of your employees will only have this one additional opportunity to join MainePERS as an employee of your District. This is because they will have been employed by you for more than 5 years before the start of next year’s open enrollment on September 1, 2023. Staring with the open enrollment in 2023 only employees with less than five years of employment on September 1^st will have the opportunity to join.

The Membership Start/Participation Begin Date for employees electing to join during open enrollment will be the first day of the pay period immediately following the date they provide you with their election to join as long as that date is in no instance earlier than September 1, 2022 or later than the first day of the pay period that is on/immediately after November 1, 2022.

If an employee elects to join MainePERS at any point during open enrollment, they must always participate with MainePERS whenever employed by you now or in the future. This means they cannot stop contributing to MainePERS while employed by you for any reason.

Employees who elect to join under this provision cannot purchase credit with MainePERS for the period that they declined to participate. This means that any employee who joins MainePERS will have prospective membership only.

The retirement contributions of employees who elect to join under this provision will be subject to federal income tax. This means their retirement contributions will not reduce their federally taxable income while they are working but will reduce the amount of their retirement benefit that is subject to federal income tax when they retire. This is different than it is for employees who elect to join MainePERS when first hired/eligible.

Instructions

Form CL-0102A Limited Period Open Enrollment Application for Membership, must be used for these employees’ elections to join or not to join MainePERS under this provision. Please submit this form to us electronically via Employer Self Service (ESS). This functionality will be available in ESS starting September 1, 2022. PLEASE DO NOT use the regular Application for Membership for employees joining or declining under this provision.

This form may be downloaded and copied to aid in your collection and recording the elections of your employees. DO NOT submit the paper versions of these forms to us. Original, signed election forms should be kept in your employees’ personnel records. You should then report their election to us by your electronic submission of the Limited Period Open Enrollment Application for Membership via ESS. This functionality will be available in ESS starting September 1, 2022. For technical questions on completing the form in ESS, please contact your MainePERS Employer Reporting representative.

Every eligible employee must complete an Application at every enrollment opportunity until they are no longer eligible to make an election. You must complete the Application in full and submit it to us electronically regardless of whether the employee elects to join or decline as we need all of the information to record the election in our system.
Indicate which open enrollment period applies to the employee by placing a check in the appropriate box in the Employer Section of the form.
The Original Hire/First Eligibility Date is the first date the employee was hired into a MainePERS eligible position.
The Membership Start/Participation Begin Date is the date the employee will begin contributing to MainePERS based on this new election which will be the first day of the pay period immediately following the date they submit their application to you electing to join as long as that date is in no instance earlier than September 1, 2022 or later than the first day of the pay period that starts on/after November 1, 2022.
You will use the same position class, plan class and personnel status codes as you would for all other participating employees; and the employee and employer contribution rates for that plan remain the same as they are for your participating employees. However, you will enter a different Rate Schedule Number to designate the contributions as being after-tax. See Section 3 for information on the new rate schedule numbers.

Employees who elect to join should also complete a Pension Beneficiary Designation for Pre-Retirement Death Benefits form. These can be completed and signed electronically and submitted to us via DocuSign from our website. Download and review CL-0722A Information Regarding Pension Beneficiary Designation for Pre-Retirement Death Benefits , then Download DocuSign Form CL-0722. Of course, these can be printed, completed and mailed to us physically as well.
On the Membership Start Date/Participation Begin Date, begin deducting MainePERS retirement contributions from your employee’s earnings and reporting them to us on your payroll report using the applicable plan code and the one of the following Rate Categories and Rate Schedule Numbers. While you will still determine the amount of contributions due by applying the contribution rate to your employee’s gross earnable compensation – the retirement contributions will be subject to federal and state income tax.

For Regular Plans, these are based on the first date the individual participated in our PLD Consolidated Plan with any PLD employer. For Special Plans, you will use the Rate Categories and Rate Schedule Numbers associated with the Regular Plan Normal Retirement Age 60. If you are not sure if your regular plan employee contributed to MainePERS before with another PLD employer, call Retirement Services at 1-800-451-9800 and ask us to look it up for you.

Regular Plan individual first participated in the PLD Consolidated Plan before July 1, 2014 OR individual is participating in any of our Special Plans:

Rate Category	Rate Schedule Number (RSN)	Regular Plan – Normal Retirement Age (NRA)
PTX	54	60
PTXEP	55	60

Regular Plan individual first participated in the PLD Consolidated Plan on/after July 1, 2014:

Rate Category	Rate Schedule Number (RSN)	Regular Plan – Normal Retirement Age (NRA)
PTX1	57	65
PTXEP1	58	65

PTX and PTX1 should be used when the employee is paying their contributions

PTXEP and PTXEP1 should be used if the employer is paying all or some of the employee’s contributions for them.

For assistance with selecting the appropriate rate category and/or rate schedule number, please contact your MainePERS Employer Reporting representative.