< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb
23
Randy DeFrehn
Executive Director / National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans
Last year’s rank: 6
Randy DeFrehn, a former benefits consultant at Segal Co., scored a career success at the end of last year, when he helped shepherd the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 through Congress as an add-on to a year-end omnibus bill during the December lame-duck session. The MPRA, a revision to ERISA, allows trustees of “severely troubled” multiemployer pension funds to cut promised benefits to plan members; it could apply to 20 percent of those plans, which cover a total of 10.4 million union members. Among the bill’s staunchest opponents are Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has sponsored a bill aimed at reversing MPRA; the Pension Rights Center (No. 22); and many union officials. “No plan has to do this except for ones headed for insolvency,” says DeFrehn, 63, who has lobbied for the Taft-Hartley community since 2001, when he became executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. The idea behind pension cutbacks — as first outlined in a 2013 NCCMP report, “Solutions Not Bailouts” — was to save a partial benefit for participants in failing plans now rather than wait for the money to run out. The report also recommended redesigning current pension plans to create a pooled defined contribution model, an idea introduced in a congressional hearing earlier this year.
The 2015 Pension 40
1. Bruce Rauner 2. John & Laura Arnold 3. Chris Christie 4. Randi Weingarten 5. Phyllis Borzi |
6. Kevin de León 7. Alejandro García Padilla 8. Laurence Fink 9. Rahm Emanuel 10. Sean McGarvey |
11. John Kline 12. J. Mark Iwry 13. Damon Silvers 14. Jeffrey Immelt 15. Joshua Gotbaum |
16. Robin Diamonte 17. Mark Mullet 18. Terry O’Sullivan 19. Raymond Dalio 20. Ted Wheeler |
21. Thomas Nyhan 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman 23. Randy DeFrehn 24. Robert O’Keef 25. Caitlin Long |
26. Kenneth Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend 29. Ian Lanoff 30. Joshua Rauh |
31. Ted Eliopoulos 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle 33. Teresa Ghilarducci 34. Denise Nappier 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. |
36. Hank Kim 37. Paul Singer 38. Bailey Childers 39. Amy Kessler 40. Judy Mares |
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