Pension News: DC Double Dipping and $174k at 59

1. Double Dipping in DC -- "More than two dozen retired police officers who were rehired by the District, including the chief of the police agency that protects government buildings, have been improperly paid both a full pension and full salary for several years even though the D.C. Code prohibits that, according to city documents and interviews with officials. For retired cops, firefighters, and teachers who return to the city workforce, city law requires that their salaries be offset by their pensions. 

HR Director Shawn Stokes says she asked her staff to identify whether any retired, then rehired, employees were double dipping improperly. So far, her staff has identified 25 retired MPD officers who have come back to work for the city and drawn both a full salary and a full pension. The city’s records don’t make it easy to identify double dippers: “It could be more,” said Stokes."

2. CNBC -- "After nearly 40 years in California public education, Patrick Godwin spends his retirement days relatively free of financial concerns, after he retired last July at age 59 with a pension paying $174,308 a year for the rest of his life. 

Such guaranteed pensions for relatively youthful government retirees — paid in similar fashion to millions nationwide — are contributing to nationwide friction with the public sector workers. They have access to attractive defined-benefit pensions and retiree health care coverage that most private sector workers no longer do.

Experts say eligible retirement ages have fallen over the past two decades for many reasons, including contract agreements between states and government labor unions that lowered retirement ages in lieu of raising pay." 

MP: Must be nice when your pension puts you comfortably in the richest "top 5%" ($154,000 minimum income in 2009 according to IRS data,or the top 8% according to this WSJ website) of Americans.... in retirement... for not working!  And the substitution of lower retirement ages for higher pay, when both aren't possible, illustrates just one example of the excess that motivated Wisconsin to end most collective bargaining for unionized public employees.

(Thanks to Bob Wright for the second article.)