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Friday, August 17, 2007
Block cronyism and pension double-dipping
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At the age of 58, Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Juanita Hicks retired with a pension payout equal to 88 percent of her annual salary of $143,372. At the behest of her hand-picked successor, she promptly returned to work as a $55-per-hour consultant.
This is an incredibly stupid system — gamed, mined and exploited relentlessly by well-connected public employees. It’s stupid in design, stupid in operation.
That the governor and the General Assembly allow to go on should outrage every working stiff in Georgia.
One outrage is that Hicks and most, if not all, of the other Superior Court clerks in Georgia, as well as sheriffs and other public officials, are allowed to double-dip daily, to count every day on the job for credit in at least two publicly financed pension systems.
Taxpayers directly provide one, with a generous benefit formula that gives Hicks an annual payout of $105,588 per year. And they indirectly provide another. Fees of $1.75 each from fines, $1 from every civil case, and 50-cents from every real-estate filing are collected and paid into a separate retirement fund for the clerk and deputy.
That’s a kitty, separate and distinct from the county employees retirement fund, that provides a minimum of $1,700 per month to clerks who have 12 years of service and have reached the age of 55.
The first outrage, then, is that Georgia allows double-dipping — and, furthermore, legislatures have for decades been compliant in continuing the abuse. There’s an in-the-shadows system in play for the Superior Court Clerks’ Retirement Fund of Georgia and for similar special-beneficiary funds that keeps them ever from rising to the public’s radar.
The system is to raise fees until the pot builds up and then to get legislative agreement to raise payouts because doing so will require no new or higher fees. The Legislature compliantly nods and rubber-stamps the hike. It’s a never-ending, never-examined cycle.
The key reason is that beneficiaries such as Superior Court clerks are politicians with their own voting blocs. Easier to pay them off with double-dipping pension systems than to take them on and risk their ire. So nobody does.
The Legislature needs to reform the system by closing the single-beneficiary pension systems where those on the public payroll are eligible for inclusion in broader public retirement systems. Close them all to new clerks and phase them out. It’s absurd for taxpayers to fund two or more pension plans for the same day of work.
The second and easier legislative fix prompted by the Hicks revelations is to end the practice of allowing Superior Court clerks to appoint their successors. It’s a system that invites cronyism and the kind of sweetheart transaction evident in the appointment of Hicks to the $55-per-hour job. As reported by the AJC’s Steve Visser, the job “has no written goals or deadlines and has delivered no tangible work product in six months of employment.” Hicks’ time sheet show her working from mid-afternoon or early evening to midnight or later.
Under existing law, in any county with a chief deputy clerk’s position, that person “shall succeed the clerk of the superior court if a vacancy occurs” and serve until Jan. 1 following the next general election. The incumbent, is thus allowed to appoint a successor, an absurd arrangement that opens the door to corrupt agreements.
In counties without that position, the probate judge calls a special election to fill the vacancy.
Since Fulton has the chief deputy clerk position, Hicks gave the job to Cathelene “Tina” Robinson, who in turn brought Hicks back onto the payroll. While the General Assembly is fixing what’s broken, it should too outlaw the practice of expending public money to hire back retired elected officials. To afford Hicks’ hourly charges, Robinson kept two clerk slots vacant. The county signed off on the deal because the superior court clerk is an elected position.
On a larger scale, the state really does need to move out of the defined benefit pension business, which invites the Legislature to create special deals for individuals and interest groups. Give employes retirement money up front, in the form of 401(k)s for example, so there’s no temptation to come back and game the system for unearned and undeserved benefits. Meanwhile, fix the systems Hicks and Robinson reveal to be broken.
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