Brian Karoul was ready to move back east.

He and his pregnant wife, who both grew up in Massachusetts, wanted to be closer to family after he spent five years working as a police officer in Arizona. Mulling opportunities all over New England, they ultimately chose New Hampshire because of its “appealing” retirement system for police officers.

Karoul transferred to the Manchester Police Department, where he’s worked for the past 18 years, under the impression that his time in Arizona would count toward the years he needed to work before he could retire with a full pension.

In 2011, however, New Hampshire lawmakers made changes to the retirement system that erased those five years from his creditable service. They also retroactively modified the pension formula for some employees who’d been on the job for less than a decade, meaning Karoul and others would have to work longer to receive the benefits in place when they were hired.  

“I got the rug pulled out from under me,” Karoul said.

When Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a former prosecutor and attorney general, moved into the corner office, she promised to restore pensions and benefits for those Group II employees – police officers, corrections officers and firefighters – like Karoul.

She proposed spending $33 million annually to bridge the gap, funded by an expansion of slot machines and state gaming revenue. That pitch initially sailed through the Legislature in both the House and Senate versions of the next state budget.

This week, however, a small but powerful group of state representatives and senators negotiated a last-minute deal that tampers with Ayotte’s proposal.

The compromise would still allocate roughly $120 million over the next eight years. But instead of restoring pension calculation to the average of an employee’s three highest-earning years, as advocacy groups working with Ayotte had fought for, it enacts a $125,000 pension cap for the roughly 1,500 “Group II” employees who started before 2011. 

Ayotte, who has prioritized law enforcement and public safety from the get-go, said Thursday she’s prepared to veto the budget if it passes in this form. The full House and Senate vote on sending a final version to the governor next week.

Without her retirement package, Ayotte argued the budget “falls short” of serving all of New Hampshire.

“We have a responsibility to take care of the men and women who have helped make New Hampshire the safest state in the nation,” Ayotte said in a statement on Wednesday, immediately after budget writers made the amendment. “The changes made to the budget today shirk that responsibility and continue the past mistake of not providing police officers, firefighters, and corrections officers the benefits they have earned.”

Ayotte’s proposal, which she unveiled in her February budget address to lawmakers, was one of the few funding priorities that garnered applause and support from both sides of the political aisle.

Recently, however, Senate Republicans said they couldn’t accept a fix that allowed “spiking,” where municipalities can allow employees to cash out sick days and unused vacation to inflate their income toward the end of their service to boost their lifetime pension calculation.

Others, like Seifu Ragassa, president of the New Hampshire Group II Retirement Coalition – the group working with Ayotte to restore pre-2011 pension calculations – argued that anti-spiking laws are already in place.

Ragassa also equated the pension cap to an income tax on first responders.

“If you’re taking that money and we’re not using it to calculate my pension, are you going to return that money? They’re not. They’re not going to return that money,” Ragassa said. “The whole thing is horrible.”

The deal struck this week lost support not just from Ayotte but from Democrats like Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, who removed herself from budget negotiations over it.

“We owe more than just a debt of gratitude to our public safety workers who do so much to keep our communities safe,” Rosenwald said in a statement Wednesday. “This compromise position is simply unacceptable … Both bodies have already passed a version that helps right a promise we broke. We should keep it that way.”

To Karoul, who’s also the vice president of the retirement coalition, the last-minute deal made after the House and Senate already agreed to Ayotte’s proposal feels “undemocratic.” While the changes made this week won’t impact him personally, he said, it feeds into a growing feeling among first responders of “distrust” toward lawmakers.

“If they can make changes any time they want, including retroactively, then how are we ever going to have a safe and secure retirement?” Karoul said.

First-responder jobs already face a labor shortage in New Hampshire, and Karoul said these changes could lead to an exodus of the state’s most senior law enforcement officers and firefighters.

“Those are the people that you really do not want to see walk out the door, because if you do, agencies that are already shorthanded are going to be left with younger, not the most experienced people,” Karoul said. “In my opinion, that jeopardizes public safety.”

Under the current system, Karoul, who’s 47, would have to work five more years – a total of 23 years in New Hampshire – to obtain retirement from the police force. Coupled with his five years in Arizona, that’d put him at 28 years of work for the 20-year benefit he came for.

He’s not sure he wants to stick it out – especially in a busy city like Manchester.

“I don’t see the benefit of staying,” he said. “Even doing that type of work one extra year is a lot, you know, especially when you feel like you’re constantly under attack. It’s just hard. It’s hard to do the job when you don’t feel supported.”

 Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America.