The first DROP design was implemented in Baton Rouge, LA in the mid 1980s to incentivize senior city employees to remain on the job. The defined benefit pension in place at the time required only 20 years vesting for sworn employees, before they were eligible for full retirement. Overwhelmingly, once an employee posted a 20- year term of service, he retired and collected a pension. Consequently, the city found itself continually recruiting and training new officers to replace those who retired. In an effort to alleviate this issue, a DROP was created. It covered all groups of employees (police, fire, & general) and accomplished its stated purpose of increased retention, while also being cost neutral. For this reason, DROP plans began to spread across the country and were viewed as an effective retention and succession-planning tool. As a testament to this, over one-half of the fifty states have some iteration of DROP today.