Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > August > 20
Monday, August 20, 2007
State lawmakers must rid pension plans that bilk taxpayers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The system abused by former Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Juanita Hicks and her hand-picked successor is flawed on so many levels that, but for the self-interest of beneficiaries in elected office, it would have been fixed decades ago.
Hicks, 58, who retired Feb. 21 after 18 years in office, with a final salary of $143,372, is a double-dipper — a triple-dipper, really, since she was given a $55-per-hour job assisting her chosen successor. In addition to a county pension of $105,588 and her salary assisting successor clerk Cathelene “Tina” Robinson, Hicks qualifies for a second public-financed pension from the Superior Court Clerks Retirement Fund.
One overriding message should be carried away from the public attention of the Hicks arrangement. The message is intended for the Republicans who now control the governor’s office and both houses of the Georgia General Assembly. It is this:
Before you take ownership of a corrupt system, change it. You’re five years in power, three into complete power. One day, and perhaps one day soon, you’ll be just like the Democrats who slopped at the public trough. You’ll begin to feel entitled, and to protect that entitlement, you’ll use the public purse to reward personal and political friends and interest groups, just as the Democrats did.
Georgia has a long, sordid history of pension rip-offs. Eons ago the courthouse gang convinced legislators to set up fee-funded pension systems for them, even though laborers and hired hands in some smaller counties had to wait until recent decades for retirement plans. The same is true of sheriffs and judges and tax commissioners.
Local tax commissioners, in fact, found a way to weasel in on the more lucrative Employees Retirement System of Georgia, the state employees’ plan.
A 1952 constitutional amendment that followed adoption of a 3 percent statewide sales tax in 1951 carefully retained a .25-mill state levy that previously had been collected at 5 mills. That quarter-mill, about $30 per year for the average property owner, made local tax commissioners agents of the state — and therefore eligible for a retirement bonanza. Those officials are eligible for both a state and local pension for the same day on the job.
Sheriffs are eligible for multiple plans — their own, the county’s and the Peace Officers’ Annuity and Benefit Fund — all three funded by taxpayers directly or via add-ons to fines. Fees ranging from $3 to 5 percent of fines and bond forfeitures are added to fund the Peace Officers’ fund and $2 or more to fund the sheriff’s second or third same-day-on-the-job benefit.
Layers are added on, but no Legislature ever goes back and deals with the inequity created by rewarding public officials with political pull.
The problem with getting a permanent fix is that legislators and employees are all beneficiaries of the plans they control. After public attention was drawn to rip-offs almost a quarter century ago, the existing abused plan for state employees was closed and a new retirement system was created.
The new system remained relatively untainted by sweetheart provisions until the new employees hired after 1982 started to think about retirement.
They, too, routinely persuade legislators to add special clauses to cover a personal situation. So we have, and have always had, a state retirement system that’s constantly being revised for the benefit of a few individual employees.
The only solution is to give workers cash for retirement, cash that they control in 401(k) accounts, so that they’re not coming back in 10 years or 20 years insisting that plan covering 77,000 state employees be revised to provide a sweetheart arrangement for some employee or official with a friend at the statehouse.
At the end of every day, the state and its employees should be even, fair and square, with salary and benefits completely known. A defined-contribution pension plan, unlike the current defined-benefit plan, would eliminate all temptation to toy with a mature pension system in ways that rip off taxpayers.
All of these secondary pension systems funded with fines and fees should be closed immediately to new public officials, and the add-ons either eliminated or used to fund something that matters — the state trauma network, for example, which is projected to cost $100 million.
One pension for one day of work.
Permalink | Comments (78) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Sam Nunn? Who he?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The question today is timing in politics. Former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, a revered figure in Georgia politics while serving in the Senate between 1972 and 1997, is tossing around the prospect that he’ll enter the presidential race as an independent.
“It’s a possibility, not a probability,” he told the AJC’s Jim Galloway. “My own thinking is, it may be time for the country to say ‘Time out. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it’s not serving us now.” He cites as evidence a “fiasco” in Iraq, excessive federal spending, the absence of a serious energy policy, and a presidential campaign devoid of serious discussion of those matters. He’s among those who argues that the the far left and right dominate the debate.
Nunn’s right about the issues not being addressed responsibly. But I don’t remember another looming crisis, Social Security’s solvency, being addressed responsibly by any Congress or presidential candidate over the decades Nunn served in the Senate.
Since Ross Perot brought us Bill Clinton, I’ve sworn off third parties. They’re spoilers. And whether it’s Michael Bloomberg or Sam Nunn, they’re good for something under 20 percent of the vote. Nunn was needed in, say, 1992, By now time’s passed him by, in national politics at least.
The question, though, is timing. Ten weeks is an eternity in politics. Ten years — the time Nunn’s been out — is a double lifetime. I’m curious how many Georgians still have a strong impression of him. The state changes awfully fast.
Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson also may have waited too long. With every passing week, and the first of the primaries less than five months away, it’s harder to imagine either of them in the Republican race. I think by now the field is set in both parties.
Does Nunn excite any takers here? Was there a time he could have been a serious contender?
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
