Members of a joint budget committee on Monday approved closing the state employee pension system’s budget with the addition of a new investment officer alongside Edmundson to help manage PERS’s $54 billion in assets. The new position comes with a base annual salary of $189,222 along with benefits, paid for by PERS administration fees.

The effort to pass legislation targeting B.D.S. had been pitched as a way to combat a very real rising tide of anti-Semitism locally and nationally, but opponents have derided the laws as both a waste of government time and resources and a threat to free speech rights, leading groups including the American Civil Liberties Union to file lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the laws in several states.