Tennessee House Bill HB0333

Tennessee 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 1/23/25
• Refer: 2/3/25
• Refer: 3/12/25
• Refer: 4/9/25

Caption

AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 8, Chapter 36, relative to firefighter retirement age.

Summary

HB0333 amends Tennessee’s retirement law for certain public safety employees by changing how firefighter service is treated for retirement-age purposes. Under current law, the referenced statute excludes service as the chief of a police department or fire department from a particular retirement-age provision; this bill revises that language so the exclusion applies to the chief of a police department or fire department, or to a firefighter holding a rank equal to or higher than shift commander. The bill is limited to Tennessee Code Annotated Title 8, Chapter 36, and is set to take effect on July 1, 2025. In practical terms, the measure affects retirement eligibility calculations for higher-ranking firefighters by clarifying that those ranks are treated similarly to department chiefs under the cited retirement provision. It does not create a new retirement system, but it changes the statutory treatment of certain firefighter service within the existing state retirement framework. The bill’s impact is therefore focused on public employee retirement administration, particularly for fire service personnel in supervisory or command roles.

Impact

The bill amends Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 8-36-205(a)(3)(C), to expand the language governing firefighter retirement-age treatment by expressly including firefighters with a rank equal to or higher than shift commander alongside police and fire chiefs. This changes how the state retirement statute applies to certain fire service employees and may affect retirement eligibility or benefit calculations for those ranks under the existing public employee retirement laws.

Sentiment

The available voting history shows strong support and no recorded opposition in committee, with unanimous or near-unanimous favorable recommendations in both the House Public Service Subcommittee and the House State & Local Government Committee. No committee transcript discussion was provided, so the overall sentiment can only be inferred from the votes, which suggest the bill was viewed as a straightforward, noncontroversial clarification to retirement law.

Contention

No specific points of contention are reflected in the provided materials. The only potentially sensitive issue is the scope of the retirement-age change for higher-ranking firefighters, since it could affect who qualifies under the statute and how retirement rules are applied to command-level personnel. However, the unanimous committee votes indicate that any such concerns were not significant enough to generate recorded opposition.