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Friday, September 1, 2006
Public pension system needs an overhaul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Outrage of the week? Try this: Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, whose administration was a cesspool of civic corruption, will collect $3,652.84 a month from the wallets of his administration’s victims while serving 30 months in federal prison.
Former City Councilman Ira Jackson suns on Hilton Head while collecting $5,124.46 per month from the public purse. This is a guy whose full-time service as aviation commissioner lasted less than three years, who was convicted of 130 counts of mail fraud, accepting bribes and tax evasion. A local businessman, Dan Paradies, was convicted of giving Jackson payoffs in excess of $1 million.
Less than three years of full-time employment — on top of 21 years as a part-time city councilman. The payoff? A public pension of $5,124.46 per month, even though the service was corrupt.
Buddy Fowlkes, who held the part-time office as city councilman for 32 years, was convicted of accepting bribes from an airport concessionaire. He now suns on Marco Island, Fla., with a city pension of $1,675.86 per month.
Former state school Superintendent Linda Schrenko, who reports to federal prison a week from Monday, will collect in excess of $5,600 per month from Georgia taxpayers while serving eight years for defrauding those who pay doubly for her upkeep.
There is a way to stop this. And, in fact, had Schrenko come along now, her offense would have caused her to lose pension benefits. A state retirement law that went into effect on July 1, 1985, declares that any public employee convicted of a job-related crime is entitled only to reimbursement, without interest, of contributions the employee made to the retirement system. It applies, however, only to those who “first or again” become public employees after July 1, 1985.
It is equally vile that part-time politicians — members of school boards, city councils, county commissions and the Legislature — are able to tap into a pension system created for those who earn their full livelihood from public employment. By taking a full-time job on top of a part-time career, Jackson — and a long line of state politicians before him — are able to get pension payouts as though they had worked full time for government for their entire careers.
Legislators, in another of the mid ’80s reforms that came because of public outrage at scandalous abuses of state retirement systems, agreed that legislators who took office after Dec. 31, 1985, would not be able to transfer part-time service from the Legislative Retirement System to other systems for full-time benefits after Jan. 1, 1986.
The General Assembly needs desperately to do two things. One is to apply the law prohibiting full-time benefits for part-time service to all state and local pension systems. The other, and the more important reform, is to take steps now to protect both employees and taxpayers from temptation and abuse.
The ideal solution is first to guarantee that benefits will be paid as they now exist and are promised to all existing employees in the Teachers’ Retirement System, the Employees Retirement System of Georgia and the dozen or more smaller retirement systems the state maintains, and then to close them to new hires.
In the place of the defined benefit plan now offered, the state should create a defined contribution plan, something like a 401(k). New employees would immediately own both their contribution and the state’s, plus interest. When they leave, the benefits go with them.
The system that exists now is a magnet for abuse. Retirement laws affecting hundreds of thousands of employees and retirees are routinely rewritten for the benefit of well-connected individuals based on the changed circumstances of their lives.
And, as with Schrenko, the interpretation has been that if an employee works one day during any period that any benefit exists, it becomes a lifetime contractual benefit. The General Assembly could change that, too, by writing a general law declaring that a retirement benefit is not a contractual right. It’s not with Social Security.
It is truly offensive that working men and women, waitresses, maids and janitors alike, are forced to pay taxes to support lavish pensions, often unearned, for politicians who are additionally corrupt. The General Assembly can change that. And it should. If they stay honest, give them what their contributions earned — and no more.
- Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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Middle East, spelling bee, Carter’s plan
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
T hinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• A U.N. peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon is to peacekeeping as a canary is to mine safety. Both indicate when conditions aren’t safe, but neither actually does anything to alleviate the problem.
• Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says the cease-fire, with a call for 15.000 U.N. peacekeepers, is a major diplomatic success. It was, too. Just not for Israel. His ministering time draws nigh.
• GOP legislators are squeezing the Georgia High School Athletic Association to set rules for athletic practices in hot, humid weather. A difference between liberal and conservative legislators is that conservatives legislate as a last resort, while liberals legislate because they believe nobody else has good sense. School officials do.
• No bigger home-schooling fan exists in the media, but when an 8-year-old wins a spelling bee by correctly spelling the word “mail,” there’s the c-l-u-e that the competition’s not t-u-f-f enough.
• The Bush administration urges the U.S. Supreme Court to end the practice of drawing school attendance boundaries to achieve an arbitrary racial mix. The practice, employed by a thousand districts nationwide, should be halted. Schools desperately need to get back to the job they do best — academics — and leave the social engineering to parents. And to Hollywood, of course.
• John Mark Karr is to the JonBenet murder what Al Gore is to the Internet. They didn’t do it. Thought they did, but they didn’t.
• Think the bad guys don’t read American politics? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenges President Bush to a televised debate on world issues. Now where do you suppose he’d get the idea that he’s smarter than Bush? The American left, of course.
• U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gives the party of fiscal conservatives a bad name — not that he or a number of others in the party are actual fiscal conservatives. His previously secret “hold” on legislation to create a searchable database on the $2.5 trillion in government contracts, grants, loans and other financial information, has been outed. Go home, Ted. Quit. Go.
• How can Americans — any and all Americans — delude themselves into believing they’re not better off here than they would be anywhere else in the world? In Cuba, 300,000 families are getting new Chinese-made refrigerators. “Actually, they’re quite expensive,” said one purchaser. “I’m paying the equivalent of $286. My wife and I make about $25 a month. So, like most people, we’re financing it over a 10-year period at 10 percent interest.” Another, 42, said, “This is the first time I see a brand- new fridge.”
• Welfare reform’s lesson is immigration’s. Its success came because it sent a clear, unmistakable message: You’re expected to work and to move off the dole. The message, combined with a few incentives, changed expectations — and behaviors.
• A “grim milestone,” it’s called. And it is. American military losses in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon surpass the death toll in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, and next month combat operations in Iraq will pass the length of time U.S. forces fought in Europe in World War II. The temptation is to ask: And this proves what? World War II veterans of the 4th Marine Division gathered here last weekend. One of their battles was Iwo Jima. Some perspective: 2,972 died on Sept. 11. In Iraq and Afghanistan, 2,941. In less than a month on Iwo Jima, 6,891.
• I’m not into golf, but even I can appreciate the dream foursome that celebrity golfer Buck Lanford, a Fox 5 sports anchor, would assemble: Bobby Jones, Ronald Reagan and his 3-year-old son, Will. Throw in Furman Bisher for conversation and I’d caddy.
• Have the Michael Moore-Howard Dean Democrats done a party swap-out with Mexico? Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the defeated presidential candidate in Mexico, urges fellow citizens not to recognize the winner and vows to create a parallel leftist government in the streets.
• Jimmy Carter agrees to host a meeting with former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. Stand by for a joint statement condemning the Bush administration.
• OK, I can’t have the IKEA PR pro. Or the Atlantic Station spin-sters. But can’t I just borrow the Seeger’s restaurant promoter for a few hours? He/she’s real good.
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