LITTLE ROCK — The double-dippers are still at it. Both state employees and elected officials are still retiring, then returning after entirely too short an interval, to take up their old jobs and collect pension benefits, too. That way the taxpayers can pay them twice. Good deal for them, not so much for Us the Taxpayers. It seems some public servants have a way of serving themselves first.
The very officials who are supposed to protect the public interest and the public purse-our legislators-have also figured out a way to earn two years of credit toward their state pensions for every year they serve. No wonder the phrase Professional Politician has become more of an accusation than description.
Wasn’t all this supposed to have been corrected? It was. Last year, state employees and officials were required to wait a decent interval-six months-before coming back to work for the public. But, and there’s always a but in even the best-laid of political plans, that requirement applied only to most of those covered by the state’s Public Employees Retirement System-not all.
Different rules apply to some 1,800 other state employees, so some of them have found a way to double-dip. Read all about it in Andy Davis’ front-page story last Thursday. (“Officials still retire, bounce back to jobs/ New state rules fail to bar all pension-salary combos.”) It’s not that these double-dippers have broken any law, but that the law itself is still broken. And needs fixing. As with so many repairs, whether to a house, car or appliance, it’s the fix that now needs fixing.
Which is just what one of the more responsible members of the Legislature proposes to do next session-if he can just get re-elected November 2nd, of course. He’s Allen Kerr of Little Rock, and he’s taken the initiative on this issue before, even if that hasn’t made him exactly popular with an establishment used to doing business as sadly usual. There’s nothing like a public official’s putting the public first to irritate some of his colleagues and fellow state employees.
Representative Kerr would lengthen the time the state’s retirees have to stay retired before returning to the state payroll, and, while he’s at it, he’d eliminate the favored treatment for legislators under the current, uneven system. Not just for the sake of the taxpayers but to keep the pension system itself strong. To quote him, “If they want to retire, they should retire.” And not keep coming back through this revolving door, draining the system’s reserves.
It’s enough to make a tax-paying citizen wonder: Would there be anything wrong with adopting a simple little rule that would solve the problem-instead of fiddling with the rules and regs and requirements and all the other little knobs and dials on this pension system? A simple little rule like: No state employee or official may collect a pension while drawing a salary from the state office he’s just retired from. Or would that be unspeakably simple?
It’s good to know Allen Kerr is working on the problem. Just as he’s taken an interest in it in the past. The voters in his district-HD 32-need to send him back to the Ledge next year. Not just to serve their district but the whole state. Arkansas needs him. And more legislators like him.
Editorial, Pages 10 on 10/25/2010